


Our Kind

by pinkskyline



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Vigilantism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:13:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 30,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25288126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkskyline/pseuds/pinkskyline
Summary: What if, instead of attacking everyone at the end of season 2, Hannibal laid his cards on the table and made a deal. Being a tame serial killer hunting under the direct supervision of Will Graham is better than being a fugitive, after all.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 117
Kudos: 274





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Canon Divergent after Season 2 Episode 12, where Hannibal is clearer about what he wants from Will earlier and makes different choices because of that. Somewhat influenced by the Russian show The Method (which is like Russian Dexter, but he’s basically a state-sanctioned serial killer who only kills serial killers) and The Blacklist. The one thing that bothers me about the setup I’ve built for the story is that I don’t think the team would realistically be able to work with Hannibal no matter what deal he made after he killed Beverly, but the show seems to think the unforgiveable thing is killing Abigail Hobbes (even though she was a serial killer! And Beverly was the best!), so I’ll go with that, as it makes the most sense (to me) for Hannibal to make his proposition at this point in the narrative. I haven’t read a ton in this fandom, and couldn’t find any fics with a similar premise. If they exist can someone let me know? I’d love to read others.

The knock sounds early—so early the dogs hadn’t even stirred before the abrupt noise sets them in a frenzy of barking.

Will answers the door in his t-shirt and boxers, annoyed when he sees his visitor is Hannibal. It was bad enough being caught before getting dressed by the impeccable monster when they’d been friends. Now that Will hates him, it’s galling. He opens the door wide, and the dogs run out to greet Hannibal enthusiastically before scampering out to do their business.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you before tonight,” Will says.

Hannibal nods, his face impassive. “I think there are many things that will run contrary to your expectations today.”

Will takes a step back, allows Hannibal further into the room. Hannibal walks in and closes the door, then leans back against it, his arms loose at his sides. Will lets some of the tension leave his shoulders. Hannibal might be there to kill him, but Will can’t see a weapon. At least his dogs are outside. Will can imagine Hannibal doing many outlandish things, but vindictively chasing down Will’s dogs to kill them after killing Will is not something that’s in the realm of possibility.

Will lets his eyes wander to what Hannibal’s wearing. Aesthetics are so important to him, but then if you’re an empty shell, perhaps it’s wise to polish the outside. He’s wearing a plaid suit and paisley tie, those shined shoes. Will hopes he steps in dog shit on the way out. “Have a seat,” he says, gesturing to the chairs.

Hannibal sits, though he looks mildly affronted, as though he wishes he’d been offered refreshments. Knowing how Hannibal feels about the lack of niceties, and his usual punishment for discourtesy, Will should probably at least offer coffee, but he was almost rid of the man. Tonight he would be snared in Jack’s trap. Let him be affronted.

Hannibal clears his throat. “I know about your plans, with Jack Crawford. I know you’ve betrayed me. Betrayed my confidence.”

Will freezes in the act of sitting down, trapped halfway between standing and sitting. He should have offered coffee.

Hannibal raises a hand. “Please don’t try to kill me, or whatever else you’re cooking up underneath those angelic curls in that feverish brain of yours. I have no intention of hurting you, though I will kill you if you insist.”

Will sits down heavily. His mouth turns down at the sides. “Feverish brain? Too soon.”

Hannibal’s mouth curls up in that barest hint of a smile he seems to reserve just for Will. “I would have brought you breakfast, but I knew you wouldn’t eat it. Can I make you coffee? I’d like your head to be clear for what I have to say.”

Will nods and sees to his dogs while Hannibal fusses around in his kitchen. Will doesn’t let the dogs back in, but he sets food outside for them.

They both sit back down and Hannibal hands Will a coffee, and it’s somehow much tastier than any Will had ever made himself with the same materials.

“I wouldn’t hurt your dogs,” Hannibal says.

Will says nothing, but his scepticism looms large between them. “Why are you here, Dr. Lector?”

“I have a proposal for you. It’s for Jack Crawford as well, but I thought I should approach you about it first, because it can only work with your agreement.”

Will’s eyebrows draw together. “What proposal? You want to cooperate with the police for some deal? Jack will never make a deal with you.”

Hannibal blows the steam off his coffee and takes a sip. “Perhaps it’s better the devil you know. Jack Crawford wants to hunt serial killers. I’m inclined to help. To continue to help.”

“It takes a thief to catch a thief doesn’t make the moral sense recoil as much as hiring a serial killer to hunt other serial killers. Besides, you’d never be a sanctioned consultant, unless, perhaps, you were in prison.”

Hannibal nods. “That’s why I came here instead of asking Jack when he came to dinner tonight. I wouldn’t want official ears hearing about this from a wire he was wearing. This could never be fully sanctioned. There could never be official charges against me or a legally binding quid pro quo. But Jack does so hate people like you and me. He wants us dead. I’m not opposed to being the one who kills them.”

Will ignores the implication that Will is the same as Hannibal and scoffs. “In what world would Jack Crawford use one serial killer to hunt another?”

Hannibal smiles again. “In a world where you’re supervising me. I could be under house arrest. I wouldn’t see patients anymore, of course. I would help you with cases, and you would make sure the only people I hunt and kill would be people you’re sure are hunting others.”

Will puts the coffee down and leans back in his chair. “Why would I agree to that? To supervising you? I couldn’t teach. I couldn’t have a life. I couldn’t trust you not to feed me my own dogs in a petulant moment, so I could hardly keep any.”

Hannibal leans forward. “I know you couldn’t have been faking everything. Your reactions to me, and to us, have not just been the actions of someone playing a part well because of empathy. You like to hunt bad men, and then you like to kill them. State-sanctioned homicide has a long and glorious tradition here in the United States, and elsewhere. Assassinations, extrajudicial killings, soldiers, the death penalty. It’s very ugly, but the government has given unspoken and literal permission for killers to ply their trade since the beginning of governments.” He leans back, takes another drink of coffee. “You don’t have to tell Jack we hunt together. I’m not planning on leaving the man any bodies to examine so he won’t have to know the part you play.”

Will laughs. “No displays? I can’t believe it.”

“My displays aren’t pathology, they’re artistry. I don’t need to do them. And I’d sacrifice a great deal to have you as my hunting partner, for real this time. With no lies between us, and no illusion either of us wants the bad man to end up in a cell.”

Will considers for a moment, then shakes his head. “It can’t work. How could it ever work? What if some oversight committee finds out? It would ruin everyone’s career. To say nothing of the fact that you killed Beverly Katz.”

“Beverly was an agent. A professional. She took a risk and payed the price. A warrior who dies in battle needs no apologies from the soldier who killed her. And the political fallout from acknowledging that Jack has been working with a serial killer for years without realizing it would be unimaginable. Surely it’s preferable to have an unorthodox former psychiatrist, one who is not allowed out of his house unsupervised, consult on cases.”

“Wouldn’t the deal be vulnerable because you’d never been convicted of any crime? What if you change your mind?”

Hannibal grins. “Then you could hunt me. Besides, don’t pretend you don’t know about the little compromises law enforcement makes to protect people. I know of at least two serial killers who have been stymied in their efforts by obvious, twenty-four hour surveillance. Police couldn’t convict them, so they decided to make sure they were too well-observed to ever kill again.”

Will frowns. “Won’t it look suspicious if every time a serial killer gets noticed by our Unit they disappear, and never kill again?”

Hannibal raises an eyebrow. “A problem very few will shed tears about. Besides, the Behavioral Analysis Unit was not created to hunt serial killers, but rather to study them and to learn insights from those serial killers already incarcerated. Let your colleagues study serial killers and we’ll hunt them.”

Will laughs. “There won’t be many to study if we’re murdering them all.”

“You don’t need them, when you have me. And your delectable imagination. And wouldn’t you rather the serial killer was a dying species? We ate endangered birds together once before, much more helpless than the people we’ll hunt. Serial killers feed off of each other. Off of the notoriety that comes each time another’s death count and methodology is revealed. Each serial killer you put in jail is a contagion on society, ripples that could land in unexpected places. Wouldn’t it be better to take vengeance before they have the opportunity to enjoy the fame society gives them for their crimes? It could save lives.”

Will considers. It all makes sense. Hannibal has an answer for everything. Everything but one. “Why did you kill Abigail Hobbes?”

Hannibal puts his coffee mug on the table and clasps his hands together. “I didn’t kill her. She’s alive.”

Will doesn’t believe it’s true. If it was, he would have revealed her much more flamboyantly. Hannibal can't resist drama. But then…it was possible. They’d never found her body, just some blood, and an ear. With her cooperation, it was possible. But why would she agree? 

Will sighs. “Jack was right. She hunted with her father, didn’t she? And not because she was coerced. Not just to save her own life.”

“She loved it. I hate to shatter your illusions, but Jack would have put her in prison if the truth had come out. I had to do it.”

Will looks at Hannibal’s impassive face. If he really did hate to shatter Will’s illusions, it was only because he wanted to use them to manipulate him. “Do you honestly think I could work with someone who tried to destroy me?”

Hannibal reaches across the expanse between them and puts a hand on Will’s knee. “My Will. I never tried to destroy you. I told you once you weren’t delicate. Swords are made from heating and striking steel, over and over, bending and twisting the metal until it becomes something quite new, and stronger than was ever thought possible. Crystalizing it into a blade worthy of the name. I forged you to fight by my side. I would never destroy you.”

Will laughs and moves his knee so that Hannibal is forced to remove his hand and sit back. “Forged me like a blade? You isolated me from my friends and family. Tried to train me to react to things the way you react. To depend only on you. That behavior has more in common with an abusive boyfriend than a master sword maker.”

If Hannibal finds this comparison lowering, he gives no indication. He says nothing, and picks dog hair off his suit.

Will frowns. “You said I betrayed you. How do I know you aren’t just doing this to humiliate us? How do I know I can trust you, and why do you even want to do this, if I betrayed you?”

Hannibal clasps his hands together. “I was hurt by what you did, but I understand it. You were only doing what you thought you had to do to survive. You thought I was repeatedly and unrepentantly acting with malevolence in order to destroy you. I think you’ve recently started to understand what I was trying to do, and once I fully explain, you’ll see I’m not your enemy. And if it helps, I’ll give a signed or even a video confession of all my crimes to Jack, just in case the deal ever falls through and he needs to prove I’m the monster you always said I was. I can have the same from him, agreeing to knowingly let a serial killer ply his trade on the behalf of the FBI. That amount of mutually assured destruction should be a reasonable facsimile for trust.”

Will takes a shaky breath. “I want to see Abigail.”

“Of course,” Hannibal says. “And then?”

Will expels a long sigh. “And then I’ll go talk to Jack.”


	2. Chapter 2

The meeting with Abigail went as well as could be expected. She told Will everything, even those things Hannibal would have preferred she not say. Will didn’t talk to Hannibal much during the visit, but the dark looks he shot Hannibal’s way spoke volumes. However, any faith Will lost in Hannibal when he learned of his actions with Abigail seemed to restore some of the trust Will had in himself. Telling him about Abigail was worth it to see something ease around Will’s eyes. Hannibal hadn’t faked Abigail’s death only to hurt Will—there had been a myriad of reasons—but he hadn’t had any idea how much Will would feel. Hannibal had been piling bricks on Will’s back to see how much he could take, and to Hannibal she had just been a brick. Perhaps several bricks.

He may have overplayed that hand.

Hannibal was good at guessing how normal people would feel, or how they’d react, when he applied certain pressures. But he never really could gauge how sensitive Will Graham was. He felt so deeply. Hannibal closed his eyes and tried to expel the seductive image of what it would feel like to be the focus of that emotion. Well, he knew. But he’d only ever managed to make Will hate him. At first hate had been better than the initial disdain Will had felt. That depressing indifference. But now Hannibal wanted. He wanted. He was ashamed at how much he wanted to be Will’s friend, and how transparent his desire for Will’s friendship was to the man in question.

Hannibal went through life coolly derisive of human attachment while people clambered for his affection, and yet managed to desperately desire the good opinion of the only person who wanted nothing to do with him. Who knew that Hannibal’s actions where Will was concerned were rooted, somewhere down deep, in a need to connect.

He had wanted Will to change. To become. To become someone who would not only empathize with Hannibal, but be his brethren.

But the connection between him and Will was something more than that in a way that Hannibal was only now realizing. He’d almost left Baltimore in a fury. His plan had been to kill Abigail in front of Will and then gut him—and get rid of anyone else who got in his way. But something had made him hesitate, though usually he was nothing if not decisive. His hesitation had worried him to the point where he’d spent some time in his mind palace, imagining how that course of action would make him feel.

He’d felt lonely. At first he’d thought the loneliness had come from missing Abigail, but when he ran another scenario in which he’d gone to Italy with her and only killed Will, the result had been the same. He’d missed Will, ached for him. Perhaps the hurt felt real because Will had hurt him outside of the mind palace, had lied about their connection. Had lied to get close to him.

But that wasn’t it. Hannibal knew Will. He knew lies. Will had only been lying some of the time. Much of the time—most of the time—he’d been telling the truth. As different as they were, and as uphill a battle it was going to be to make Will trust him again, Hannibal was almost certain he’d be happier if he stayed, even if he lost some of the trappings of freedom.

It was worth swallowing his pride to stay close to Will.

But he hadn’t anticipated how deeply Will would feel it all.

Though perhaps anyone would react the same way to spitting up an ear in their sink.

The meeting with Jack Crawford was also surprising. In the end Hannibal and Will went together. “Let us present a united front,” Hannibal said.

Will gave him a haunted look and simply conceded to his wishes. Hannibal hoped his unorthodox plan hadn’t broken Will. He was quite simply the best toy Hannibal had ever had.

And perhaps Jack Crawford was more interesting than he’d first thought. Not just mercenary, but amoral. He’d agreed far too quickly to a plan in which Jack, through Will, could decide without judge or jury who lived and who died. If Hannibal had been planning on playing them all for fools, Jack would have been the rabbit most quickly caught in his snare.

Oh, how lowered he would feel if he knew it took the man Jack had happily accused of murder—that sinister, spooky Will Graham—longer to agree to his morally compromised plan than it took Jack.

There were countless banal things to do before the plan was officially in motion. Jack gave a video confession of the plot first, and then Hannibal confessed to as many murders as the FBI knew about. He’d taken a peek at the Chesapeake Ripper’s file when he’d first started working for the BAU. No one had thought it suspicious. Everyone wanted a piece of the Chesapeake Ripper. More than a peek. There were parts he had memorized, although most of it was in Jack’s blunt, livid, indignant script, and not Will’s more nuanced and accurate prose.

Hannibal wished that Will would write a book about him, sometimes, but then he realized that perhaps it would be a shade too honest for either of them. Will wouldn’t write in that campfire story tone many used when speaking about serial killers, but his matter-of-fact insights would disgust people. Not only about Hannibal, but about the way Will himself thought. Will had to be careful who he shared his understanding with.

No, like so many things, Will’s insights about him were most properly shared just between the two of them.

After the confession, Hannibal was fitted with a tracking device, and Will was entrusted with the care of it. It gave Hannibal a few feet beyond his property line, but nothing more, but Will could deactivate it when they went out of town and establish different parameters. Will insisted on a lock on the spare room he was to stay in (though they were all studiously avoiding the knowledge that if Hannibal wanted to, he could kill Will at any moment, and would hardly have to wait until he was asleep), and tiresomely had to disperse his dogs to friends.

“I won’t hurt your dogs,” Hannibal insisted again, “Even if I’m feeling petulant.”

Will rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t trust you to last through a week’s dog hair on your fancy furniture—or hell, your suits—before you did something drastic.”

Dog hair. Hannibal hadn’t thought of that. Will did know him rather well.

Will insisted on doing a thorough catalogue of all the food in the house, even to the point of doing a DNA test on all of his meat. The indignity was only worth it because Will was living there now, as he should have been for ages. It was nice to walk into a room and find him there, or stare his full while Will was working.

Hannibal had quite a lot of time for staring, as he was no longer allowed to see patients. Trying to turn his patients into serial killers or persuade them to kill themselves wasn’t exactly in the Hippocratic Oath, but somehow Jack had placed a mark against him with the state psychiatry board without having to go into details. He was still a medical doctor, and he wondered at the reason that Jack had left him that. Perhaps he thought a Hannibal Lecter with a medical license was somehow more useful to him than one without, though Hannibal couldn’t imagine why.

Mercenary really was too kind a descriptor for Jack Crawford.

Hannibal found he had many things to fill up his days. Drawing, research, cooking, writing. He was more able, in fact, to fill his time than Will was. He realized, belatedly, that he should have offered to live in the country with Will, so his companion could have had his dogs, if not in the house, than nearby, and walked them, and fixed engines or whatever it was he did with his spare time. When he said as much, Will started as though he’d said something offensive, and walked out of the room.

Will did that a lot.

At one time he would have told Hannibal his every thought, but that time was over now. Or it at least was on hiatus.

What they needed was a hunt. Jack Crawford was being stingy with his cases, either because he wasn’t sure how to break the news to the team that Hannibal was working with them again, or because he was saving them for something special.

Or, heaven forbid, there just wasn’t any murders that week.

Killing someone often had the effect of lightening Hannibal’s mood, and it might serve as a kind of icebreaker for Will and Hannibal, who had been cohabitating without really living together for nearly a week without exchanging more than a few words. He was just getting into the swing of investigating some news articles about a series of murders that had taken place in Cleveland when the bell sounded.

Will looked up from the file he was reading. “Who is that?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. Would you like to see for yourself?”

Will frowned. “What have you been telling people?”

Hannibal perked up, thinking about the lie he’d thought up, which was sure to get people talking about him without making them run away screaming from him on sight. “I told them I’d lost my license and was under house arrest for something too shameful to confess to. I can’t wait to hear what the rumor mill constructs.”

Will laughed. “They’ll probably think you took stock tips from someone who was mentally unstable. Not everyone’s imagination is like mine.”

Hannibal wished he could touch Will. “No one has a deeper admiration for your imagination than I.”

The bell rang again, impatiently. Will went to chase the visitor away, and came back with a note about the opera foundation which Hannibal promptly discarded.

Will sat down and looked over at Hannibal. “They’ll think you lost your license because of me.”

Hannibal waited for more.

“I’m living with you. I’m a consultant with the FBI now, not an agent. It doesn’t make any sense for me to be guarding you, especially seeing as how they all think you’re harmless. They probably think we’re lovers, and maybe it was inappropriate for you to testify on my behalf because of that, or you committed perjury out of love for me and you’re in some kind of house arrest because of that.”

Hannibal was strangely comfortable with this idea, which was not so far from the truth. He had forced a mistrial by killing the judge, after all. “Would that bother you?”

“I’m sure it’s not as bad as what Freddie would say about us, given the chance.”

Freddie Lounds had the scoop of the century—at least, it should have been. But a gag order had been issued because her knowledge of Hannibal’s suspicious character came during an investigation, and she was unable to print anything. Jack had promised to keep her appraised of all the gory details of at least five future serial killers. Not their favorite thing to do, but otherwise the entire operation would be compromised. Whether or not Freddie would keep her mouth shut wasn’t entirely Hannibal’s concern, though. Now that the FBI worked with him knowing he was a serial killer—or at least Jack did—whether Freddie talked would hurt Jack more than it hurt Hannibal.

Hannibal wanted to make a joke about taking care of the Freddie problem once and for all, but, like the joke about brain fever, it was too soon. Even Hannibal himself felt sensitive about Freddie Lounds. Instead, he took his iPad over to Will and showed him the article he was reading.

“You think the killer is our kind?” Will asked.

Hannibal left the iPad and went to sit down. “There’s several articles about the murders there. All the open tabs. Read through them and see what you think.”

“It’s hard to know what’s sensationalism and what’s real without seeing police reports, and we might not be able to get access to those. You know the FBI goes where people ask them to go on things like this. Unless there’s a victim that’s taken over state lines, it’s really a thing local police deal with.”

Hannibal’s mouth stretched into a grin. “Is jurisdiction really something the two of us need to worry about?”

Will didn’t look up from the iPad, but he smiled slightly in return. “I suppose not. I’ll have to talk to Jack about it.”

Hannibal nodded, energized by the thought of a hunt with Will. A real one. Something about Will’s posture—something tense and hyper alert, made him think Will felt the same way. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like to do alternate perspective chapters, but I don't know if I can do the Hannibal perspective that well so I might just do the rest of the story mostly from Will's perspective. Next chapter, the hunt is on :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The only reason I am fully confident that Jack would use one serial killer to kill another under Will’s direction is because he actually did that in the final episode. So that part of this story is actually canon, lol. 
> 
> I have never used a sex offender registry and I tried to use the one in Ohio for research and it seems more complicated than I would have imagined. But I’m going to guess a former cop and a genius doctor can figure it out.
> 
> Warning for vague mentions of sexual assault in the context of a serial killing (continued in the next few chapters, including a brief mention of child pornography). One of the weirdest things about serial killers on network TV (and I include the excellent show Prodigal Son in this comment) is that they seem to be very cool with showing murders and desecrated bodies, but generally don’t get into the sexual/perverse nature of most of these types of crimes AT ALL. Mindhunter on Netflix is more accurate in this regard, and the main character was the actual inspiration for Jack Crawford. If you’re at all interested in serial killers and know basic facts about any actual serial killers, my mentions of the sexual aspects of the crimes are extremely mild compared to real life cases because I don’t really want to get into it (because GROSS)—but it’s very hard to actually talk about serial killers without mentioning sexual assault and so I likely will continue to mention those things for the rest of the story. 
> 
> Warning for vague disparagement of Cleveland. I’ve never been there but Will and Hannibal do not recommend.

Will walks out of Jack’s office with permission to hunt a serial killer. To death. A fission of excitement courses through his body, and only the fact that he has to work with Hannibal puts a damper on things. At least, Will comforts himself, Lecter has extensive experience in these things, because Will feels less than prepared for the task. 

But alone Will never would have been audacious enough to consider that he could just ask Jack if it was okay to kill certain people.

Jack manages to get access to the digital police files of the serial killer in Cleveland, but doesn’t tell the local PD he plans on sending anyone there. Their files are just for records, he says. Posterity. They courteously send the files on, and Will takes them home to Hannibal. 

He finds Hannibal making him a beautiful dinner. Hannibal has taken very good care of him since he moved in, practically waiting on him hand and foot, and seemingly very happy to do so. Will wonders what his angle is.

“You don’t have to make these elaborate meals when it’s just the two of us, you know,” Will says. Although Hannibal is no longer allowed to give dinner parties, so perhaps he’s making do with the only audience he’s got.

Hannibal looks scandalized. “I would never consider you anything less than a guest of honor in my home. I’m so pleased to have you here.”

Will considers that it’s entirely possible that Hannibal is telling the truth. It would explain a lot. He crosses his arms in an attack of awkwardness. “I’m flattered. But you don’t have to go to any trouble on my account.”

Hannibal finishes plating the food. The food is more beautiful than anything Will has seen in an art gallery. Hannibal brings the food from the kitchen to the dining room, with Will following afterward. “If at any time, it feels like trouble, I’ll certainly scale back my efforts. But for now, please enjoy.”

He proceeds to give the name of the dish, and list some of the ingredients and how they were prepared. Will considers it pleasant white noise, and for a moment allows himself to be grateful Hannibal isn’t in a cell, or dead from a shootout. After a few moments he pushes the thought away. Hannibal might have once been his friend, but he wasn’t someone Will should be grateful for. And maybe living in a mansion and having an overeducated, brilliant man wait on him as though he is a king and making sure he was nourished and happy at every moment is a very seductive thing, but Hannibal likely had a reason for it. Probably wants back in Will’s mind. Maybe he thought about ways to induce seizures to control him as he cooked him dinner. Will pushes the paranoid thought away. It might not be unrealistic, but it’s not particularly helpful, either.

The guilt about betraying Hannibal had been eating him up inside, and Hannibal had found a way to make that, and the consequences of all Hannibal’s actions, go away. Will felt absolved, although he had no real concept of why Hannibal had been able to move passed it. The peace between them was probably only temporarily, but Will would take what he could get.

“I got the case files and permission to pursue the case you found. The files are in your office.”

Hannibal gives a kindly smile. “Our office.”

Will laughs, a tense, unhinged sound. “Can you stop with that stuff? We’re the only two here. You don’t have to pretend to be my friend.”

“The only thing I regret from my time as your therapist is that I did things to make you doubt that I was your friend. I would give up the progress you made towards becoming your true self if you still looked at me with trust today.”

Will picks up his utensils and starts to eat. It’s too delicious for words, whatever it is. “I would give up that progress, too. Especially since all it did was make me send a serial killer after you to kill you.”

“Admirer. He only killed one person that you know of, so he wasn’t a serial killer.”

Will puts down his fork. “Are you admitting to killing the judge?”

“Only to you.”

Will squinted at Hannibal. “Why go to all the effort to set me up and then work so hard to get me out of jail? You make no sense.”

Hannibal carefully puts his utensils down on his plate. “I wanted to be closer to you. I’m much less…emotionally able, shall we say, to be genuinely close to someone even than you are. Meddling in your brain was…something like flirtation. Usually when I find someone I’m as fascinated by as I am by you, I eat them.”

Will shakes his head several times before he has the wherewithal to answer. “Flirtation? Flirtation?”

“Testing the limits of our relationship. Seeing how far you’d let things progress. I don’t really mean it in a romantic sense. Or perhaps, not a sexual sense.”

So he did mean it in a romantic sense? Again, that would explain a lot. Will had been wracking his brain to find a reason why Hannibal had made the deal he made, and if he was…enamoured with Will in some way as more than a friend, well. That explained a lot. But he didn’t feel that much safer, especially hearing that the last people he felt the same kind of pull towards had become dinner.

He smiles thinly. “So I’m one of the few who managed to survive your fascination?”

Hannibal picks up his utensils and looks at Will with characteristic intensity. “Only.”

Will is still recovering from that ‘only’ in the plane the next day. Hannibal had upgraded their tickets from business to first class, and travelling first class is a first for Will. He tries not to get used it. A car picks them up from the airport and takes them to what is probably the nicest hotel in Cleveland. It’s still not that great.

They’d discussed the files the previous night, and had decided that due to the nature of the crime, they were going to use the sex offender registry to find people who matched the profile they’d drawn up, and lived in the area of the majority of the crimes. The way the bodies had been…violated…made both of them feel that the killer was a man who was practiced at sexual assault but had, only in the last few months, escalated into sexual murders. As such, he’d probably been in trouble with the law before now.

Hannibal upgrades their room to a suite, likely so that Will won’t have to sleep in the same room as him. Will wonders how much money Hannibal has, and how long it will last now that he can’t really work. Would that kind of question be rude, or would Hannibal answer with the same candor he seemed to have vowed to answer all of Will’s rude questions with? Will is almost afraid to know the answer, not because he is afraid of Hannibal’s lethal reaction to rudeness, but because he is becoming a little worried about how much Hannibal cares about him. Is obsessed with him. Maybe loves him. A few weeks ago he would have been sure Hannibal wasn’t capable of love. But even when Will had only known him as the Chesapeake Ripper, his pathology didn’t fit any known categories. It may actually be possible that Hannibal had learned to love, even if he’d been unable to do it in his life previous to meeting Will, or perhaps, his brand of love was not the usual kind.

Will puts the idea out of his mind. The case.

But despite himself, he feels his attitude toward Hannibal soften slightly. Not that he wants the man to love him. Or whatever. But. Well. It explains a lot.

They sit on armchairs in the seating area in the center of the suit, drinking tea that Hannibal ordered from room service. The room is large and functional, but not opulent, with two adjoining bedrooms and a bathroom.

Will looks at Hannibal. “So you’ve done this before, right? You sewed the color palette man into his color palette. How did you find him, if you weren’t able to ask questions or use traditional police methods?”

“I knew where his creation was, and I waited for him to return to it. But when I’ve done other things like this, I’ve accomplished a lot through breaking and entering.”

Will feels his eyebrows climb his forehead. He nods slowly. “I guess if we’re here as hunters we don’t have to get evidence. But what if we get caught?”

Hannibal shoots Will a feral grin. “The possibility of getting caught is what makes it fun.”

Will allows himself to be excited by the idea of doing something against the law just because it’s fun. He hasn’t done that since college.

They look at the sex registry for Ohio and cross reference the geography of the attacks with the types of offenses they thought were likely to lead to the kind of methodology they’d seen in the file, using local online news to cross reference. It’s slow work, especially since Will is used to asking junior agents to do that kind of thing. Hannibal is focused and effective—he is a hunter in a primeval way that feels dangerous and alluring, even when he’s only looking at a computer screen.

By evening they have seven names. Will feels discouraged. He’d hoped to be back in Baltimore in a few days, but investigating seven men by breaking into their house or stalking them seems like the work of more than a few days. Lecter agrees, but he seems content in a way that Will has never seen him before.

Around six-thirty, Hannibal stands and places a hand on Will’s shoulder. “Will you come to dinner with me? I’ve made reservations for us.”

Will looks up and takes off his glasses. “I could eat. Do I have to get changed? I can’t imagine you wanting to go to a restaurant that lets causal diners in.”

“I can’t imagine you in formal clothes. Perhaps one day.”

Will stands, finding the action brings him physically closer to Hannibal than he’d expected to be. “I’ve worn formal clothes before. I didn’t enjoy it. And I certainly didn’t bring anything fancy to wear.”

Hannibal leans closer still, and inhales. “You’re wearing the aftershave I bought you. Perhaps one day you’ll let me buy you a suit.”

Will tries not to be too obvious about rearing back, but he sees a slight hurt in Hannibal’s eyes before his face becomes an impassive mask again. He laughs and runs a hand through his curls in an effort to distract Hannibal. “I don’t think a suit will ever excite me the way they do you.”

“Why did you agree to this, Will?” Hannibal asks abruptly. “Why did you agree to spend all this time with me? Is the thought of killing that seductive to you?”

Dear Abby, the man I like only likes me because I’m a homicidal manic, Will thinks irreverently. But Hannibal is genuinely upset. Will puts a hand on Hannibal’s forearm without thinking. “That’s not why. I could convince myself I didn’t want it. I could live a normal life. But you would have been locked up, or killed. Or a fugitive. I never would have seen you again.”

“And that would matter to you?” Hannibal glances at Will’s hand on his arm.

Will hastily removes his hand and saunters over to the window, avoiding Hannibal’s eyes. “I can’t make some grand declaration, Hannibal. I can’t even think too deeply about it. Not yet. But it would matter to me.”

He glances back at Hannibal, who gives a quick nod. “I picked a restaurant that would appeal to my gastronomic tastes, and your sartorial tastes. Such things are possible in Cleveland. I think they largely share your disdain for formal wear.”

“I’ll put on a tie and jacket, just in case.”

Hannibal nods, and goes to do whatever it takes to make himself look like a handsome but vaguely menacing mannequin at an expensive shop.

Will tries to convince himself he hadn’t just agreed to a date with Hannibal Lecter.


	4. Chapter 4

The actual food served at dinner was appalling, not the least because Hannibal had a secret horror of putting meat in his mouth he hadn’t prepared himself, so he’d been forced to eat vegetarian, but Hannibal found it surprisingly wonderful to be out somewhere with Will. They’d eaten together countless times, and travelled together as coworkers, but to go out with Will as a friend was addictive. He’d have to orchestrate more occasions like it. They were more likely when they were out of town, as Hannibal was under strict house arrest in Baltimore.

The next day they began the hunt in earnest.

“Should we split up? Cover more ground?” Will asked.

“I know you want to get back to Baltimore quickly. I’m sympathetic. And perhaps after a time you will be able to take care of this part of hunting on your own. But this first time, we should work together. I would hate to have to call Jack and ask him for his assistance in getting you out of jail.”

Will laughed and agreed that he would follow Hannibal’s lead.

Over the next several days, they staked out the first several names on the list they had compiled. The first one was nothing special, the second was either clean or had another place to keep all his incriminating things (they might have to go back to him), and the third posed a problem.

“He’s not our kind. But he’s something,” Will said.

Hannibal nodded. They’d found a large amount of child pornography in his apartment. Hannibal grinned. “We can kill him. Jack might even approve.”

“Jack wants us to kill killers. We don’t know if this man has actually killed anyone, and in fact, we both agree it’s unlikely despite his proclivities. What about an anonymous tip?”

Hannibal allowed that this was also a possibility, and they watched from a distance as the police executed a warrant, took boxes of evidence away in their cars, and then took the man away in handcuffs.

Will looked at Hannibal. “The forth?”

Hannibal nodded. “The forth.”

The forth was again, uninteresting, and they made their way to the address of the fifth man. He was a military man in his forties named Vincent Howard Norris. Cleveland was his hometown, where he’d returned after spending most of his life living in many different places across the US and the world while deployed. The only reason he was on their radar at all was because of a series of sexual assaults he’d been convicted of as a very young man. If they’d been looking into these crimes in any of the other places he’d lived, they wouldn’t have shown up anywhere, as his military record had been exemplary. It had likely been a long process to get into the military in the first place, considering his early offenses, but once there, he had been able to seem like an upstanding man.

Hannibal turned to Will. “If he’s our killer, he likely killed many more people than just the ones here. If we don’t kill him, he might cooperate with police and let them know who he killed, and where his victims are buried.”

Will nodded. “Many killers want credit for everyone they killed, but some are smart enough not to own up to all of them. We can’t take it for granted that he’d tell them anything—or even that he killed anyone outside of Cleveland. He’s squeaky clean enough that unless investigators have him dead to rights they might take years to convict him, if he ever gets on their radar at all.”

Hannibal nodded. “Many police officers are former servicemen themselves, and would not bother investigating a decorated serviceman, regardless of his criminal past.”

“It might be moot—he might not be our guy. But I say we should protect the living before we protect the dead.”

Hannibal agreed. He packed tools they might need to break in, his knives, the plastic suit he wore, and one he’d had made for Will before all that unpleasantness, and they went to look into Norris.

The house was small and overlooked on three sides by neighbors. Hannibal and Will sat in their rental car pretending to look at real estate listings, and waited for Norris to go to work.

“We won’t have the privacy to do much with the body. I wonder if we’ll even be able to sneak it out of here,” Hannibal said.

Will started. “Are you convinced he’s the one?”

Hannibal shrugged. “Not convinced. But it’s good to be prepared.”

Will cleared his throat. “You aren’t going to…you aren’t planning on eating him, are you?”

“I wasn’t aware that was an option, although you didn’t stipulate I couldn’t in our deal. I promise you I won’t trick you into eating human meat again. The true joy of feeding it to unknowing people is that they don’t know about it. There’s something so satisfying about someone making a self-righteous speech while unknowingly cannibalizing someone.”

Will shifted in his seat. “Isn’t that…unclean…anyway? What if a person has an STD? Can you get one from eating an infected person?”

“No more unclean than eating cattle raised in deplorable conditions.”

“But what about the consequences of eating human meat—ones that we might not know about because most societies don’t do it? No one knew feeding cow brain matter to cows caused Mad Cow Disease until it happened. You say you’re careful about what you put in your body, but you eat people—probably the dirtiest animals of all. On purpose.”

Hannibal smiled. “Mortuary cannibals in Papua New Guinea developed a disease locally known as kuru, or ‘the laughing disease’ from being ritualistically fed brains. It is essentially the same disease as Mad Cow. The cause is the prions, which is a brain protein that forces similar brain proteins in those that ingest them to fold over on themselves and cause the brain to misfire.”

“You seem very cheery about the whole thing.”

“I’m somewhat fatalistic about the issue. If I die because of my cannibalism, it is, perhaps, my victims taking belated revenge. The taboo of eating human flesh may have developed not because of any innate horror at the act, but because of the increased likeliness of the practice spreading disease. Most diseases, however, are cooked out when the meat is prepared properly at a high heat. The person most vulnerable to disease from the meat is the one preparing the meat when it’s raw—cleanliness is of the utmost importance. A modern kitchen and modern sanitary practices make the issue negligible.”

Will grimaced and went back to watching the house. Around ten in the morning Norris left, and they walked passed the front door and into the backyard, hoping they were unobserved. There were quick ways to break in, but almost all of them involved breaking the lock, something they would prefer not to do because it might spoil the element of surprise and make Norris flee.

“No alarm stickers,” Will said as they crouched and examined the basement windows for possible entry points.

Hannibal stood. “Alarm companies have permission to look around in houses where alarms are set off to assess damage or find intruders. The fact that he might not want that in a neighborhood like this, where most houses appear to have an alarm, suggests he could be our man.”

Will looked up. “No alarms at your place?”

“Nothing other than the ones keeping me in,” Hannibal said. He offered Will a hand, and Will took it, standing up and then hastily releasing Hannibal’s hand.

They donned their plastic clothes, then easily jimmied a sliding glass door and entered the house. Will confirmed there was no alarm in the house, and they moved methodically through the house looking for proof.

Will called softly to Hannibal to join him in Norris’ study. He was looking through a labelled and itemized filing cabinet filled with women’s underwear preserved in plastic bags. “Not definitive, but I think he might be the one.”

Hannibal picked up the bag containing the most recent pair of underwear and looked at the label. It was labelled with the missing girl’s name. “There’s enough evidence to give investigators in the other places he’s lived clues as to what might have happened to other missing girls.”

“There must be a hundred pieces of lingerie here. You don’t think he’s killed a hundred girls, do you?”

“Certainly not,” Hannibal scoffed. “But he had a rich fantasy life and liked to relive his kills or his sexual assaults. I’m sure he kept photos, as well.”

Eventually they found photos of Norris dressed in stolen lingerie, in various different feminine-looking beds. There were no pictures of anyone after they’d been killed.

Will crossed his hands over his chest. “He must have hidden those pictures somewhere more secure. Maybe the basement?”

“You look in the basement. I’ll give the main floor a sweep.”

Will agreed.

Shortly afterward, Will called out to Hannibal and requested he come downstairs. He was standing by the east wall, and pointed to the material it was made of. “Is that soundproofing?”

Hannibal looked at the basement with his draftsman’s eye. There was at least ten feet missing in the basement footprint. With that, and the soundproofing, there was only one possible conclusion. “A secret room?”

Will put a hand on the wall. “There’s no door.” He frowned. “If he has a secret room, why wouldn’t he put all the incriminating evidence in there, instead of in his study?”

“They’re precious to him. He doesn’t want to risk his victims contaminating them.”

Will’s face went pale. “You think he keeps his victims in there? Alive?”

“Did you think he spent thousands of dollars on a room without a door so he doesn’t annoy the neighbors playing the bagpipes?” Hannibal asked. Will’s mouth turned up slightly at the question. As far as Hannibal could tell, Will hadn’t been using his normal empathy methods to understand this killer, and Hannibal wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was because he hadn’t had access to any crime scenes, or perhaps it was because he was hunting him knowing he would kill him in the end. Being empathically connected to Hobbs before killing him hadn’t served Will so well.

“What if there’s someone in there right now? We can’t kill him without letting her out—or leave her in there for him to possibly kill before we handle him—that’s nothing short of evil. But if she sees us, she might give police a description of who we are. We can’t depend on the idea that she’ll lie for us if we kill her kidnapper even if it makes sense to us that she would. People don’t always act the way you expect them to act. Should we just call in another anonymous tip?”

Hannibal smiled. “I say we kill him when he gets home, and then find out how to let any prisoners out afterward. We can pretend to be a different kind of vigilante than the kind we are.” He reached into his bag and pulled out two surgical masks.

Will laughed. “I never thought I’d see the day when the Chesapeake Ripper gave the local neighborhood watch credit for one of his crimes.” He paused, looked at the floor. “You sure you want to do this now?”

“I’m ready if you are,” Hannibal said.

Will looked uncertain, but nodded.

They concealed themselves in a room that appeared relatively unused underneath the staircase on the ground floor of the house until Norris returned at the end of the work day. Hannibal placed a finger against Will’s lips and then opened the door, sneaking out to find Norris with Will following.

They heard a sound like furniture being moved, and then a woman’s screams for help. He must have a trap door to go into the secret room, and a live victim.

Hannibal looked at Will. “Plans change,” he said.

Will nodded, and they donned the surgical masks and went into the living room. The sofa had been moved and an opened trap door led to a darkened staircase.

Hannibal unsheathed his knife, as they’d agreed that guns would be an unnecessary complication, both in terms of noise that neighbors could hear and forensics. “Be ready for anything,” he said.

Will laughed lightly and took out his own knife, “Always.”

Hannibal started his descent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To write this chapter, I googled “can you get STDs from eating people” and got no results, and then googled “Is cannibalism healthy?” and managed to find all the answers I needed. So if this is the last chapter I post, I’m probably in trouble with the law because of my search history, lol. 
> 
> Also, the inspiration for Norris is the Canadian former colonel and serial killer Russell Williams. He was a highly decorated pilot, had flown the Queen, Canadian prime ministers and other dignitaries, commanded an air force base, and was the husband of the associate director of the Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation (and was the next door neighbor of someone I worked with, incidentally). He was caught because of his tire treads at a road block.


	5. Chapter 5

Will follows Hannibal down the stairs, and feels naked without his gun. Despite their psychotic acts, most serial killers are not proficient in combat, which is part of the reason they kill women and children, or in the case of Ted Bundy, use tricks like pretending to have a broken arm to entice victims closer without having to fight with them. But Norris is in the military. He might not be a Navy Seal, but he is trained in combat.

And Will is walking down darkened steps towards him without a gun. With only Hannibal Lecter for backup.

At the bottom of the stairs an exposed lightbulb hanging from the ceiling flickers. Probably did his own electrical work, so the wires are loose. Wouldn’t want contractors to know about this room. Will tries to shut off the empathetic, analytical part of his brain. He only needs his lizard brain right now.

Survival. Hunt.

He follows Hannibal into a darkened doorway, where he can hear a woman grunting. Hannibal must have found the light switch, because the scene is instantly illuminated by harsh fluorescent light. The room is about ten by ten with no windows. Two of the walls are exposed cider blocks. There is a bucket on the floor, a bed, an old tube TV with a VCR, and a sink.

The girl they heard screaming looks like a teenager. She’s tied to the bed, and Norris is fighting to put a gag in her mouth. Or he was. He stands when he sees Hannibal and Will in the doorway.

Hannibal doesn’t turn around, but addresses his next words to Will. “Get her out. I’ll handle him.” Then he springs on Norris in a way that’s inhuman, his hands, one still holding fast to the knife, on Norris’ shoulders and his feet making impact somewhere near his hips forcing Norris to fall onto his back with Hannibal perched on top of him. He looks like a wolf taking down prey, and in a flurry of bites and quick stabs with his blade, he rolls with Norris to the side of the room opposite the bed.

Will goes over to the bed and takes the gag off the girl, then cuts through the ropes binding her to the bed. The ropes are part of Norris’ design. He can afford comfortable restraints, but he wants the women he takes to struggle against the rough hemp. They give their lives for him and he won’t even save them the irritation of ropes.

Will helps the girl sit up, and then stand, although her legs bow underneath her unaccustomed weight. She must have been there for a while. Will maneuvers his shoulder beneath her arm and pulls her out of the room.

It’s harder than Will expected it would be to walk out and leave Hannibal in danger, but the girl is more important right now. He manages to awkwardly shift her up the stairs, out of the house, and into the passenger seat of the rental car. It was a good thing they hadn’t rented it under their own names. If someone took down their license plate, it wouldn’t lead back to them quite as obviously. Something Hannibal had thought of.

“Why are you wearing that mask?” the girl asks.

“I don’t want you to see my face,” Will says. “Where can I take you?”

“Aren’t you the police?”

“No. I’m a concerned citizen. But I’ll take you to the police if you want to. They’ll probably want to take evidence from your hair and clothes—do a rape kit if necessary. The police wouldn’t want you to shower, but if my friend wins that fight, he’s not planning on leaving Norris alive. You won’t have to testify against him, although you’ll probably still have to answer a bunch of questions you’d rather not answer.”

Will starts the car and pulls out into the street.

“Take me home,” she says. She gives an address and tells him it’s nearby. Many serial killers covet what they see every day. Maybe she jogged or delivered his newspaper. Foolish of him, to hunt so close to his home. She rubs her chaffed wrists. “I won’t tell them anything about you or your friend. Just that you saved me.”

“Thank you.”

“He said he buried them all in the same place. I know where he meant. I’ll tell the police.” Will glances over. She’s a blond girl who might be pretty in normal circumstances. Blue eyes. Fine features. Her hair is wild and her face is dirty and streaked with old tears. She’s wearing a hospital gown, for some reason.

“I’m sorry this happened to you,” Will says.

She lets out a shuddery breath and tears fall down her cheeks. He stops at her house and she turns to him. “Thank you.”

He nods. Finds it hard to talk over the tears in his throat. “You can get past this.”

She gets out of the car and he waits until she’s in the house before driving off.

He parks a street over and then texts Hannibal his location. Hannibal texts a maddening _on my way in a few_ and then nothing else.

Will waits.

And waits.

And then ten minutes later, Hannibal opens the door and sits in the passenger seat. Will briefly thinks it’s funny to see Hannibal in a sweater and slacks, though he’d been wearing the outfit since morning. Hannibal looks at Will. “All that time and you didn’t manage to take off your plastic suit?”

Will looks down at himself. He’s still wearing it. Still wearing the surgical mask, too. The mask probably kept him from hyperventilating. He rips off the mask then drives to a secluded spot and takes off his plastic outfit and gives it to Hannibal, who fastidiously puts it into his bag. Hannibal took over the driver’s seat while Will was out of the car. Hannibal driving is probably for the best at the moment.

“What happened?” Will asks.

“I was inspired by your comment that I was going to give credit for the murder to the neighborhood watch. I strung him up in the entryway to his house—but in an amateurish way—and left a note that said _In Cleveland we protect our women_. Then I called 911 and left the phone off the hook.”

“What did you use to string him up?”

“Nothing I brought with me. I know enough about law enforcement’s methods by now to avoid such blunders.”

Because he’d found working with the FBI so instructive, hadn’t he? He’d even said as much. Hannibal loved to tell people the truth while lying. One of the little games he played.

They drive to the airport, then turn the rental car in and walk across the street to another rental car place and get another one with another fake name. Hannibal already had all the fake IDs. He’d had them made when he thought Will had killed Freddie Lounds, just in case. Hannibal had rented the first, and Will rents this one, finding the red tape of it all unexpectedly soothing. They drive to the hotel and park (they hadn’t registered the first rental car with the hotel, but had parked it across the street in a city parking lot), then take the elevator up to their rooms. They take turns showering and Hannibal orders room service.

Will eats automatically, lost in his own thoughts. He starts when Hannibal sits beside him, and then relaxes when Hannibal rubs a hand up and down his back. It’s not the kind of gesture he’s used to from Hannibal.

Hannibal’s voice is gentle and quiet. “I think you’re experiencing mild shock. I thought eating would snap you out of it, but you still seem to be on autopilot. What’s happening in that gorgeous brain of yours, Will?”

Will leans into Hannibal’s touch, and Hannibal moves his hand from Will’s back to his shoulder. Will leans his head on Hannibal’s shoulder. He doesn’t say anything.

“I can’t tell whether you’re empathizing with the victim, or upset with yourself for deliberately setting out to take a life. Maybe you’re simply afraid of getting caught. Whatever is causing your reaction, it’s perfectly natural. You’ve done something very far outside your comfort zone today. But you saved a life, and possibly many more lives. Consider that, in your reckoning.”

Will leans on Hannibal, finding his strength comforting. “Did you help the FBI with cases just to figure out their methods? To protect yourself?”

Hannibal’s hold on Will’s shoulder tightens. “I confess I like to think of myself as so different from all the other killers. But I’m just like the rest of them in one respect. I want to be understood. I want to explain myself to the people who spend the most time trying to understand me. The police are the only people who share the knowledge of my crimes and don’t…glorify them.”

“I would have thought you’d enjoy being glorified. With an ego like yours.”

Hannibal’s chest vibrates slightly. A silent laugh. “Being glorified is flattering. Even useful, in certain circumstances, as you found with Matthew Brown. But it’s not accurate. It’s not true understanding.”

Will raises his head, turns and looks at Hannibal’s face. “Is that why you were so drawn to me? Because with my empathy, I can get closer to truly understanding you?”

“Understanding is something that most people take for granted. Connection. It’s human nature to forge deep connections, first with family, then as they get older, with friends, and then with someone they want to share their life with. The inability to forge connections that mean anything real to us is likely part of the reason many people like me see ourselves as something other than human. Having someone understand for the first time in their lives is the reason most serial killers confess within hours of being caught. It’s why many investigators share their profile with serial killers once they catch them. To demonstrate understanding.”

“Will this really satisfy you?” Will asks. He doesn’t explain what he means by ‘this’.

“This moment is worth a thousand indignities.”

Well.

Will picks up his spoon and finishes his soup, and Hannibal busies himself booking a flight for them later that night and arranging a limo to pick them up at the airport in Baltimore. Will is glad he’s managed to convince Hannibal that he’s well enough to travel.

Hannibal is urbane and charming on the flight, and keeps touching Will in this proprietary way. Will isn’t sure if that’s because he’s trying to keep Will from doing anything weird after the afternoon they had, or because he’s feeling possessive. He must feel like he owns Will now that he’s managed to convince Will to kill with him. Will didn’t strike a killing blow, but he was a partner in the enterprise in every sense.

When they get home, they sit in Hannibal’s office and Hannibal shows Will a local news story out of Cleveland that gives an account of their involvement. They are presented as mysterious but not evil. They forward the story to Jack.

“I’m sorry you were not able to take an active role in the take down,” Hannibal says. “I know you wanted that.”

Will knows how much Hannibal had wanted that. To kill with him. Will sighs. “I probably did as much as I was able. I don’t know if I could have killed him as coldly as you would like me to. Not yet.”

Hannibal says nothing, and pours them each a glass of wine.

Will takes a glass from him. Starts to feel normal about halfway through the glass. He feels the tension in his shoulders release. “I want to get one of my dogs back.”

Hannibal looks surprised. “You trust me with a dog?”

Will shrugs. He does. He wishes he had one of his dogs right now, so he could escape into the creature’s easy affection.

Hannibal sniffs his wine. “Will you be able to kill again? Is this working for you?”

Will laughs. “I think the moral objections we have to worry about are Jack’s. Giving us permission to do what we did and reckoning with his part in that act are two different things. Jack can compartmentalize; he can do what he thinks is necessary for the greater good. But it’s not like he had you for a therapist.”

Conditioning him to want this. It’s hard to forget Hannibal’s part in making Will who he is today.

“How are you feeling?” Hannibal asks.

“Better. It’s good to be home.”

Hannibal smiles with actual warmth at that, like he’s wanted Will to identify this place as his home for a while. He stands. “I’ll make us a snack.”

Will’s eyes widen. “It’s not—”

A small smile. “I did not take unrefrigerated human flesh on a flight from Cleveland to Baltimore. The neighborhood watch wouldn’t butcher the target of their vigilante justice for meat. And I told you, I won’t trick you into eating it anymore. If you ever want to, I’ll prepare it with all the affection in the world. But it will be your choice.”

Will smiles wanly. Hannibal puts a hand on his shoulder. Heavy. Like he feels entitled to touch Will whenever. Will had stopped flinching at his touch somewhere between that fancy restaurant dinner and when they’d killed a man together.

Hannibal moves towards the door and pauses. “Why don’t you decide which dog you want back? I’ll call you when the food is ready.”

Will hopes Hannibal has a nice vacuum. Dog hair even annoys Will.


	6. Chapter 6

Hannibal glanced at Will. “Are you sure this is wise?”

Will spread his hand and made a disbelieving sound. “It’s what Jack wants. He’s the boss.”

“And he’s been so insightful about the two of us thus far.”

“Would you rather get thrown in jail? Executed?” Will asked.

Hannibal held his tongue. Jack had asked the two of them to come into the office and give a report. Neither man was entirely sure what Jack had told the office at large about how Hannibal had gone from one of the team, to the chief suspect in the Chesapeake Ripper cases, and back again to a teammate. They were supposed to go directly to Jack’s office without stopping to talk to anyone so they would figure out the story Jack had told to smooth things over but things, as usual, did not go to plan.

A person Hannibal didn’t know grabbed Will and pulled him into a conversation he wasn’t able to extricate himself from—and that was rare, as Will could be downright rude to get out of conversations—and Price and Zeller pulled Hannibal into their lab.

Price was the first to speak. “Is it true you were the Chesapeake Ripper’s therapist, and he threatened to kill you if you told anyone and then he ran off? What’s his name? What does he look like?”

Before Hannibal could respond, Zeller cut in. “My theory is that he threatened Will. That’s why you didn’t say anything when Will was accused of murder. The psychiatric hospital was the only place he was safe from the Ripper.”

Hannibal looked at the two of them flatly. “I have no interest in confirming or denying rumors.”

Price rolled his eyes. “But come on. How did Will ever think you were the Chesapeake Ripper? Did you let something you knew about the Ripper’s crimes, something he said in therapy, slip during an investigation once, making Will think you had to be the killer yourself? And then did the Chesapeake Ripper get jealous of you confiding in Will?”

Zeller nodded, his face avid. “Yeah, what’s it like to have a serial killer in love with you?”

_Ask Will_ , Hannibal said silently, and was so shocked at his own thoughts that he lost track of the conversation.

Zeller leaned closer, and gripped tight on Hannibal’s bicep. “Hey man, are you okay? Sorry. I didn’t mean to hit a nerve. You’ve gone really pale. You want to sit down?”

Will appeared in the doorway. “What’s going on in here?”

Hannibal flicked his eyes in Will’s direction. “Your colleagues are interrogating me.”

“Well, come on,” Will said, jerking his head towards the door, “Jack’s looking for us.”

“Hey Will,” Price said.

Will nodded at them and then grabbed Hannibal when he was close and pulled him down the hall towards Jack’s office. “What were they asking you about? You looked devastated.”

“Just good acting,” Hannibal said. “It sounds like Jack, or someone, did a good job of coming up with a plausible explanation for everything.”

It turned out that Freddie had been given just enough information to construct a narrative that made Hannibal look like a terrible therapist, but a good human being, and not a serial killer. She’d filled in the blanks with guesses and implications, and then published the story when Will and Hannibal had been too distracted by their hunt to keep an eye on her blog. It was probably not the official story that Jack had given out, and quite a bit more salacious than necessary, but Zeller and Price didn’t want to kill him for what he’d done to Katz, so it worked out.

Jack wanted to talk to Will alone, but Will seemed reluctant to let Hannibal out of his sight, and so Jack had to include him in the discussion.

“You could have asked me to leave Hannibal at home,” Will said.

Hannibal briefly felt like one of Will’s dogs, and was less than impressed at how little his hackles raised at the thought.

Jack gave Hannibal a look he must have thought was intimating. “I wanted to talk to Hannibal.” He turned much more kindly eyes towards Will. “But first I wanted to make sure you were okay. I know you can’t access department resources to deal with what happened, but maybe we could let Alana in on the deal the three of us made—”

Will put his hand up so high he nearly got out of his chair. “No, no. It’s fine. I don’t want Alana to be my therapist. And. I mean. She was sleeping with Hannibal. You think she could be objective about all of this if she knew the truth?”

A look of distaste washed over Jack’s features. “I suppose you’re right. Well, then, you’ll have to tell me what happened. I would read the report, but since you can’t give reports…”

Will told the story pretty much the way it happened, but at times Hannibal interjected to soften Will’s statements about how involved Will had been in the murder, which, at least in a physical sense, hadn’t been that much anyway.

After the entire narrative had been shared, Jack frowned. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the fact that you left Hannibal in the house alone with Norris.”

Hannibal raised an eyebrow. “Would you have preferred I traumatize Will by killing someone in front of him?” Will shifted in his seat, and Hannibal amused himself by imagining Will was struggling not to laugh. He doubted that was the case, but it was an enjoyable thought.

Before Will could weigh in, Jack responded. “I released Hannibal into your supervision, Will. What if he had run off?”

Will frowned. “And done what? He’s getting everything he wants right now. Except maybe the opportunity to feed human flesh to the upper echelons of society.”

“And I can live without that. It was amusing to me, not necessary. My cannibalism has always been a conscious choice, not a compulsion,” Hannibal said.

Jack shook his head. “Somehow that makes it worse.”

Will made an impatient noise. “All that stuff Hannibal did to me, it was to get this result. Me hunting with him. He won.”

Will left unspoken that Jack agreeing to take the deal had allowed Hannibal to win, but Jack heard it nonetheless. “Will, if you’re uncomfortable with your part in this deal, why did you bring it to me?”

Will rolled his eyes and looked at the floor. “I doubt either of us will ever be completely comfortable with this deal. But if you want me to say that I’ll ever put the innocent victim of a serial killer before watching Hannibal when I’m convinced he has no intention of escaping, maybe I’m not the best person for this job.”

“The deal wouldn’t work with anyone else. Only you, Will,” Hannibal said. He would kill anyone else. He didn’t feel the need to say something so gauche out loud, though.

Jack remained silent for a few moments. A tactic of the weak to seem powerful. Finally he nodded. “No, you’re right, of course, Will. You were right to prioritize the victim’s mental and physical safety.” He paused again, and crossed his arms over his chest. “Will, do you mind if I speak to Hannibal for a few moments alone?”

Will stood. “Of course. I’ll just be in the lab.”

Jack didn’t waste any time with power moves. He smiled slightly. Perhaps he didn’t know a smile is a signal of submission. “I seem to be trusting you with someone important to me again. Someone who needs delicate handling.”

Hannibal tilted his head. “You’d like me to handle Will? In what way, exactly?”

Disgust flickered over Jack’s features. “I know better than to think you’re altruistic, modifying your killing patterns to go after criminals instead of…whatever your criteria was before. You’re no better than those killers who can’t stay away from their own crime scene, who want to be on the other side of the police tape, and enjoy the power that goes with that.”

Hannibal’s face remained impassive, but he admitted to himself that this insight actually hit the mark. “And?”

“And you will not damage Will again. Not on my watch.”

“I have no intention of damaging Will Graham. He’s precious to me. I almost lost him, several times, mainly through my own actions. I know now that a compromise is in order. I managed to change him as much as possible in therapy, but I know now he will never change enough to be exactly like me. But I can change myself enough to meet him in the middle.”

Jack’s eyebrows shot up briefly before his expression smoothed into impassivity. “If he’s precious to you, perhaps I’ve found a way to control you at long last. If you misbehave, I can take him away from you.”

Hannibal shrugged. “Professionally. It would be Will’s choice to make himself absent from my personal life.”

Jack laughed. A hearty, annoying sound. “Do you honestly think he’d choose to be with you for one moment, if he had the choice? If he didn’t think this…sick…arrangement was the one that would cause the least damage?”

Hannibal prided himself in not indulging in self-deceit, but he couldn’t be sure Jack was wrong. Hannibal was quite sure he knew Will better than Jack did, but then, Will had fooled him before. The only person who’d ever truly managed it. Somehow, while that hurt Hannibal’s pride, it also made him proud of Will.

“I was simply remarking on the semantics of your argument,” Hannibal murmured.

Jack sneered. “I know you’re intelligent enough to realize that working with us is better in the long run that having us hunt you. But don’t convince yourself you have us fooled that you care even a little bit about any of us as individuals.”

Hannibal almost smiled. The subtext of what Jack was saying was suddenly clear. Jack had been hurt—deeply—by the fact that someone he liked and trusted (and defended) had been a monster all along, intent on his ruin. A small part of him probably wanted Hannibal to tell him it hadn’t all been a lie, as he’d been able to do with Will. But Hannibal had no such comforts for Jack. He’d been enthralled with Will from the start, but Jack held no such allure. The only tempting thing about Jack was to test his mask against the man who’d spent the most time in the world conversing with murders. To see if he would be able to tell that Hannibal was one of their number, not one of the human throng. He had seen almost immediately that Jack had been completely taken in by his manners, his outward polish, and his worldly accolades. After that the friendship had been a source of private amusement for Hannibal, but nothing more. The innate power of living a secret double life, and rubbing the unaware’s nose in it without them suspecting a thing.

Hannibal clasped his hands in front of him and prepared to give Jack a reassuring speech about how seriously he intended to take their deal, but then Jack’s phone rang with something important and saved him the trouble.

He found Will in the lab and managed to rescue him from Price and Zeller without too much trouble, and then they drove home.

“So, back at the office again. How did it make you feel?” Hannibal asked.

“You’re not my therapist.”

Hannibal nodded. “I hope not. The way I feel about you would hardly make me an objective one.”

An expression of pain crossed Will’s face, and he focused more closely on the traffic as he changed lanes. “It felt wrong that it felt so normal.”

“If you let them, the secrets you conceal from others can be a source of amusement, even joy. No one knows what goes on in your head. It’s your own private domain where no one can judge you.”

Will rolled his eyes. “I’m not imagining slightly unorthodox things. I’m planning and enacting murders.”

“You’re being yourself. Becoming yourself. And it’s beautiful to watch.”

Will sighed as though he was done with the conversation, and Hannibal let it go. Will made a turn Hannibal hadn’t expected and then remembered. “You’re getting the dog, aren’t you?”

Will flashed a smug look Hannibal’s way. “I’m getting two dogs.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may not have an update tomorrow, as I have had a rare (for me) but wonderful moment of inspiration for a new fic where I see an entire fic all at once, start to finish, and I might have to write it down instead of moving ahead with this one at the current rate. I don’t think it’ll be a long fic though so I should be back on course with this one soon. It is a Hannibal fic—I guess I’ve been thinking too much about the characters.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if there's any spelling or grammar errors. Usually I wait a day before posting because I find it easier to self-edit that way, but I didn't feel like doing that today. My other fic in this fandom "Run" is up if you're interested (it's less than 10k).

After his dogs take him out for a walk (and they do a secret let’s-not-tell-Hannibal roll around together in the grass in a nearby park), Will feels a lot better. When he lets himself and the dogs into Hannibal’s apartment, he finds the man looking far too dapper in a shirt and vest, with his shirtsleeves rolled up, tie off, and an apron wrapped around his waist.

“Do you mind the dogs in here while you’re cooking?” Will asks.

Hannibal grins and drops something for the dogs from the counter. “Don’t worry. It’s cooked. I know dogs can get parasites the same as people.”

Will shrugs. “These dogs were strays. They’ve probably eaten rotten roadkill. I think they’d be fine.”

“To say nothing of a certain fellow’s face. Although that meat was too fresh for parasites.”

Will flashes back to the scene and feels his gorge rise. He grimaces. It had been easy, for a moment, to think that Hannibal was just a friend he was staying with. To forget the person Hannibal was, and who he’d made Will into. He takes a step back and starts mumbling an excuse to leave the room.

Hannibal moves to the sink and quickly washes his hands, and then his hands are on Will’s shoulders, rubbing back and forth between them and his elbows. “Don’t do that. Don’t deny who you are.”

Will pulls out of Hannibal’s grasp. “Who you made me. I know what you do. You try to take people who have certain tendencies and push them until they break. Until they become a monster.”

“You are the furthest thing from broken,” Hannibal says reverently, moving forward as Will moved back until Will was backed up against the wall and then he was touching Will again, running his hands lightly over his shoulders. “You’re strong. Daring. A predator.”

“Why do you keep touching me?” Will asks. He looks Hannibal in the eyes.

Hannibal brings their faces closer together, so close Will can feel Hannibal’s hair on his own forehead. “Because you want me to. Maybe need me to.”

Will tilts his head and leans it back against the wall so his face is further away from Hannibal’s. “This some kind of experimental therapy, doc?”

“This is me claiming you. You’re mine, Will. Let me take care of what’s mine,” Hannibal says. He gathers Will into his arms and Will reluctantly lets him. He hadn’t thought Hannibal would be a hugger. After a moment he hugs Hannibal back. It feels good. It’s like…an inoculation. Against Hannibal’s unexpected touch. Only he knows he doesn’t flinch at it anymore, that he likes it. That Hannibal is right and he needs it. It’s because Hannibal sees who he is—the darkness inside—and treats him tenderly anyway. He never thought he’d find someone who could want all of him.

Will holds on tighter and a sob catches in his throat. He’d almost lost this. He absently wonders what Hannibal meant when he said he was “claiming Will”. Claiming him as what? A minion? A friend? A pet? A lover? He’s afraid to ask, and yet a question makes it out of his lips after all. “Can psychopaths love?”

Hannibal lets go abruptly, and moves over the food prep area. “Are you asking me as a psychiatrist, or as a psychopath?”

Will is suddenly chilly without Hannibal’s arms around him. He grabs his forearms in a kind of self-hug. “Are you really a psychopath? You don’t have a lot of the traits. If you’re a psychopath, you’re an odd one.”

Hannibal picks up a knife and starts cutting vegetables. “That’s insightful. Yes. I don’t have a lot of the lifestyle traits on the psychopath checklist. I spent many years becoming a doctor, for instance. Most psychopaths would lie or con or kill to get money if they wanted it, rather than working towards a career. They might even forge credentials, which I assure you I didn’t. However, the lifestyle traits are really about being anti-social, in the sense that they act in a way that puts them at war with society. I have that, just in different ways than average.”

“And you’re smart. Most psychopaths are below average intelligence.”

“In my quite non-clinical opinion, psychopaths in general are people who were severely abused, neglected, malnourished, or sick when they were children—and it changed their brain chemistry—halted their brain development. In some instances there are genetic factors. I come from nobility. Contrary to the popular literature about nobility serving the poor, it requires a certain sang froid to basically enslave people, so I may have come by some of it honestly from generations of my family watching peasants suffer for their benefit. Some changes might even occur in utero. They don’t feel empathy the way that that normal people do. If they’re raised in a setting which allows them to behave in a way that is cruel or criminal, they see no reason to ever stop doing these kinds of acts. No remorse.”

“Was that the case with you?”

Hannibal dumps the vegetables into the soup bowl. “No, it was not. I had a happy childhood for a time, and then an extremely unhappy turn of events made me want revenge on the entire world.”

Will steps up to the kitchen island. “Even me?”

“Why would I want revenge on the only person who understands me?”

Will blinks. “Well, I did try to put you in prison. And now you’re stuck working for the FBI as a tame serial killer.”

Hannibal laughs. “Stuck? Why do you think I suggested this arrangement?”

Will shrugs. “Part of it was because you wanted to hunt with me, and you must have thought I’d be more amenable to going after killers. And you already kill people you think are objectionable in some way, so it’s not a stretch for you at all.”

Hannibal nods. “Exactly. And part of it will be watching Jack Crawford either thrive or explode under the current arrangement. It will be delicious, Will. Either way.”

Will sighs. “And will watching my head explode be as fun?”

“You’re not a psychopath. You’re a pure empath, but strangely you seem to have directed that empathy towards dark things at some point and can’t go back to the light. Most pure empaths would never be able to be a criminal profiler because they would empathize too deeply with the victims, rendering them overwhelmed and useless. You’re a good one because you only seem to empathize with the killer.”

“Which is weird, because if you believe that it’s possible to be a pure empath, which is kind of junk science, I don’t know…you’d think the fact that psychopaths lack strong emotions would make them harder to empathize with them than it is to empathize with regular people. Considering I feel so much, and they feel so little.”

Hannibal shrugs. “I have tried to, and cannot trace the origins of your strange brain, nor figure out exactly how it works or why. I find it delightful. To answer your question from before…to a certain extent psychopaths can love, depending on the severity of their condition. I never thought I was capable of feeling it again. At a certain point, all the joy in my life became about revenge against people who offended me, or who offended decency. But I do feel love now, for you.”

Will nods. He had figured that out. “Is it possible that I could feel love for you because of my empathy?”

Hannibal put down the knife. “You mean you could mirror my emotion for you back to me, and confuse it for genuine feelings of your own?”

Will nods.

Hannibal picks up the cutting board and puts it in the sink. He keeps his back to Will. “Are you telling me that you love me?”

“I’m telling you that I don’t know what I feel.”

Hannibal nods and brings a cloth over to the prep area, wipes down the counter then rises his hands and puts the cloth away. “Understandable.”

“How do I know?”

“You could see a psychiatrist. Not me. Perhaps Bedelia—”

“I’m not seeing Bedelia. And neither are you.”

Hannibal pauses. “What?”

“You will not see her as a psychiatrist or as anything else. You will not make her privy to our deal. You won’t even contact her.”

Hannibal comes around the kitchen island. “Why is that Will?”

“Because you showed yourself to her.”

Hannibal’s eyes shine with delight. “You’re jealous.” He runs a finger down Will’s face, traces his jaw, and then cups the side of Will’s neck. “You have no need to be.”

“I decide who you see and who you don’t.”

“Yes, you certainly do. I’ll inform Bedelia—unless you’d prefer to?”

Will nods.

“The stew should be ready in an hour. How does it feel to have the dogs back?”

“Wonderful,” Will says.

Hannibal takes his hand off Will’s neck and then runs his fingers through Will’s hair. Will tries not to lean into the caress like one of his dogs would but is not entirely sure he succeeds.

Hannibal hums and moves away to finish cooking. “I’m glad you’re happy.”

An hour later, Hannibal presents the stew with little fanfare, and Will almost feels like the simple food is more intimate than the discussion they had. Certainly cooking is one of Hannibal’s passions, but it is also a performance, and to cook simple food with no ulterior motive and present it with nothing but a hunk of bread seems very revealing somehow.

The food is somehow more delicious than usual.

They don’t talk much at dinner, and go to sleep early. The next morning Jack calls when they’re at the table eating a simple breakfast reminiscent of the one Hannibal had brought Will the first time they worked together. No human meat this time.

Will puts down his phone after the call. “Jack has a case.”

“Already? How do you feel about that? Are you eager to hunt again?”

Will rolls his eyes. “Don’t talk to me like you’re my shrink.”

“Then don’t hide yourself from me,” Hannibal says, real frustration in his voice.

Will feels a flush of pleasure at the thought that he made Hannibal angry—though why this makes him happy he’s not sure. “Did you want to be my psychiatrist to know me? When we first met?”

“I wanted you to like me. To find me interesting. I wanted to fascinate you and enthrall you. To be the one you trusted. The one you held.”

Will can’t help but laugh. “Why?” He’d been told by various people in various ways all his life that he just wasn’t that special. He was difficult, but not in ways that made the inconveniences of dealing with him worth it. He couldn’t imagine how a simple man like him had managed to ensnare someone as complex and outrageous as Hannibal Lecter.

Hannibal raises his coffee cup to his lips and takes a drink. “One of life’s little mysterious. The way I covet you only gets worse with time. Perhaps what I value in you is what I lack in myself.”

Will raised an eyebrow. “Opposites attract?” He looks at the floor. It makes a kind of sense.

Hannibal puts a hand on his arm. “Are you alright?”

Will sighs. “I know we have to talk all this out. Especially to get passed all the bad things we did to one another. We have to be honest, and clear. But I find it really tiring. All this talking. All this introspection.”

Hannibal grins a feral grin. “That’s why we hunt, Will. All the trappings of civilization melt away and it’s just the wolf and its prey. Nature. The beast taking down the grazing animal with his teeth at its throat. It’s peace in the hunt Will. That’s what I want for you. For both of us.”

Will nods, stares raptly into Hannibal’s eyes, and then frowns. “I wonder how we’re going to be able to do that with Jimmy and Brian along.”


	8. Chapter 8

Hannibal, Will, Brian and Jimmy listened as Jack gave the briefing about the case later that morning. They had been called in much earlier in the killer’s progression than usual—often a killer had been working for months or years before the FBI was informed, but this time three women had been kidnapped without a trace, each within a week of each other.

“The UNSUB can’t be keeping them alive, though, can he?” Zeller asked.

Will shrugged. “The Chesapeake Ripper kept Lass for two years. There’s no telling. But I don’t know if this really screams serial killer to me. Could be human trafficking. No bodies, no physical similarities between the victims. The women are pretty, but one’s Latina, the other two are white women with different hair colors. One’s in her thirties, one in her teens, and one in her twenties.”

“Maybe that’s the point,” Hannibal suggested.

Will raised an eyebrow. “What, that he hates all women equally? Or maybe it’s something about their body type. Jeffery Dahmer chose men based on their body shape—one of the few serial killers who hunted people of a different race than his own because he only wanted a dead body to play with. He didn’t care what the man was like before he died, although he appreciated beauty.”

“He told me he killed mostly black gay men because he knew the police wouldn’t care about them enough to investigate their deaths,” Jack cut in. It was so easy to forget that Jack had been on the team that had spoken to nearly all the living serial killers in prison.

Will pushed on. “It could mean these aren’t compulsive sexual crimes at all. These women could have been kidnapped by a cartel. They were taken from close to the border. The Mexican border, I mean. Two girls from Yuma, Arizona, and one from Winterhaven, California, but all close enough that cartels wouldn’t be a crazy thought.”

“The locals don’t agree,” Jack said. “And if we agree that cartels are a border issue, police on the border probably know more about that kind of thing than we do.”

Will made a sound of frustration. “I can’t do a profile without bodies or something. I have to look at the evidence to do it, and there’s no evidence.”

Jack shook his head. “No evidence is overstating it. They do have something, although they’re keeping it close to their chest. They want you to come down there to see it in person.”

Price sighed. “I mean, I don’t mind traveling and I love a dry heat, but at this point in the investigation it seems like a waste of time. We don’t know anything.”

Jack acknowledged the point with a nod. “Usually I would agree. But the man in charge made a good case for us to go there, and he seems to know what he’s doing more than the average small town cop.”

Hannibal and Will were already packed, so they shared a ride to the airport while Price and Zeller packed up the lab equipment they were taking on their slightly later flight. Jack had paperwork to finish up and was taking a flight early the next morning.

Hannibal settled into the passenger seat for the drive as Will pulled out into traffic. He looked at Will’s profile. “You look tense,” he said.

Will grimaced but didn’t look away from the road. “This didn’t seem so weird when it was just you and me. It felt more…honest. It all starts to feel a little fake, when you’re actually taking a serial killer along with the FBI team.”

“I know how much you dislike artifice. But the path you chose when you agreed to this deal demands it of you.”

Will sighed. “I know. I just don’t know about this case. I don’t think he’s our kind.”

Hannibal frowned. “What do you mean by that? Our kind. You keep using that phrase. Do you mean serial murderers?”

Will huffed out a frustrated breath. “I mean our kind. People like us,” he looked over and held Hannibal’s gaze for long moment. “I know you kill the rude for meat. But we kill our own kind for Jack. For the acceptance of society. It’s a different kind of cannibalism.”

Hannibal found this answer deeply astonishing. “You can’t mean to suggest that you’re just as bad as me after succumbing to your darkness for such a short time.”

Will laughed. “I don’t think I’m superior to you anymore. You take pleasure in your kills, and so do I. You find ways to justify your actions to yourself, and so do I. We’re killers, Hannibal, and not because we’re empowered by the state or because we care about justice. Because there’s something deeply wrong with us.”

Hannibal turned over the words Will had used again in his head. “Do you think it’s wrong for us to kill our own kind? Do you think it immoral in some way, to kill those like ourselves?”

Will shrugged and turned the car into long-term parking. “It’s hypocritical as hell, if nothing else. And I know you might consider yourself the arbiter of good taste, but I’ve never been particularly judgemental.”

Hannibal tsked. “You may lie to me all you like, but don’t lie to yourself. You hate bad taste, darling.”

Will extinguished the engine and looked at Hannibal with his eyebrows drawn together. “Don’t call me darling.”

“My apologies Will. You would help me out immensely towards that goal if you would stop being so darling,” Hannibal said.

Will turned to him with wide eyes. “I need space from that, Hannibal. To decide for myself. To figure out what I’m feeling.”

Hannibal nodded his understanding and they got out of the car and walked through the airport. Hannibal let his mind wander as they went through the mundane tasks of checking in and walking through security. Will was being naïve to think that he could shut of his empathetic connection to Hannibal if Hannibal simply stopped being verbally affectionate. He knew now that Hannibal’s actions and decisions towards him all sprang from love. The question was, did Will love him back, or was he simply mirroring Hannibal’s emotions? The strange thing was, Hannibal wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer. Perhaps an empath gone, for lack of a better term, mad, was the only real love a man like him could expect. And perhaps since he reflected Hannibal’s own feelings back to him, it would be a kind of love Hannibal would understand and appreciate. However a part of him wanted Will’s unvarnished affection, untainted with questions of who was mirroring who.

Hannibal wondered, idly, if any of Will’s empathetic impulses had rubbed off on him. Love changes a person, after all, and Will had been one of the chief subjects of Hannibal’s thoughts since the moment they meet. Hannibal had been changed by him—perhaps he hadn’t become more empathetic, but he had changed in other ways. Bedelia would say putting someone else’s needs first had, at the very least, forced Hannibal to grow up. No, Will wasn’t simply a mirror reflecting Hannibal back on himself. That would be a rather masturbatory love affair, and he knew it wasn’t the case.

Will surprised him. Will did things that were the opposite of what Hannibal would have done. Will, frankly, drove him crazy sometimes. Challenged him, forced him to concede, change, and renegotiate.

If Will felt love, it was real love, not the shadow of Hannibal’s own feelings. Hannibal was sure of it. He felt a strange warmth flow through his body at the thought, but he knew Will had to come to the conclusion himself. It certainly wasn’t the kind of thing he would take Hannibal’s word on, not after all the things that had gone before.

He looked at Will to find the other man scowling. “What are you so happy about?” Will asked.

Hannibal nodded towards the gate. “Our section is boarding.”

The flight was adequate, and then they rented their car and drove to the police precinct. They were not able to rent the car under an assumed name this time, because it wouldn’t make any sense to do so. They would be parking in police parking lots and possibly driving around with Price and Zeller, so it wasn’t possible to conceal their car. They would have to be careful if they parked near any potential crime scenes.

Will and Hannibal went directly to the precinct. Will wanted to see this evidence that the police were keeping close to their chest, and Hannibal wanted to do whatever Will wanted.

The man who collected them at the bright reception area was a white man about Hannibal’s age and height. He wore a uniform with a non-regulation belt buckle and walked with a western swagger.

“Hubert Guy,” he said as he shook their hands. They introduced themselves, with Hannibal doing most of the talking.

After the preliminaries, Hubert led them to the conference room that had been set aside for the task force. There were two other men in the room, and Hubert introduced everyone and then turned to Hannibal and Will.

“I’ll show you the evidence now,” Hubert said.

He led them to the far side of the room where several notes in evidence bags had been laid on a sideboard. Will read them, one by one.

“Were they left where the women were taken?” Will asked.

“On their beds,” Hubert replied.

Hannibal looked over Will’s shoulder. The letters were the same kind of self-aggrandizing gobbledygook the Zodiac killer would have left. Hannibal had always thought that was more a product of LSD than any genuine pathology. He wondered if Will was right, and a cartel had borrowed the methodology of a serial killer to cover their tracks. Although from what he understood, cartels didn’t often bother to cover their tracks. However there was something artificial about the letters nonetheless.

“Do you think this is our kind of case after all?” Hannibal asked Will quietly as Hubert stepped out to take a call.

Will nodded. “There’s something there. I’m not sure it’s exactly what they think it is, but it’s something.”

Hannibal agreed. Perhaps it was someone who wanted to make it seem as though he was killing the women when he was really taking them for some other purpose. “There’s some calculation in it.”

Will nodded. “Exactly.” His head bobbed from side to side as he considered. “Doesn’t really mean much though. Other serial killers have pretended to take orders from demons and the like. A pre-emptive move towards an insanity plea for when they get caught.”

“What do you think?” Hubert asked, walking up.

Will frowned. “You were right to call us, but it’s a still not a lot to go on. I’d like to see the places they were abducted from—their residence, presumably. Are there pictures? I’d prefer to see the places themselves, but perhaps for today a picture would do.”

One of the younger policemen brought over the pictures and Will looked at them for quite some time, and then looked at Hubert. “These apartments are extremely neat. Almost Spartan. Has someone done a catalogue of what was in the apartment before the abduction and what was in it afterwards?”

Hubert frowned. “What do you mean?”

Hannibal’s brow furrowed. “You think he took some of their belongings?”

Will nodded. “Possibly. Or he made a mess and cleaned it up. In that case broken things might have ended up in the building’s dumpster. Or it could just be that they hadn’t had their apartments for long. None of the three seem cluttered. It could be a personality type that appeals to him, but for him to know that they keep their apartments clean he would have had to be invited in at some time previous to the abduction.”

Hubert grinned, energized. “I’ll have someone ask about the contents of the apartment, how long they’d lived at their place, and any dating apps or visitors who had been coming around. And I’ll have someone check the dumpsters.”

One of the policemen groaned.

Will looked off into the middle distance. “See if you can find out if any clothing is missing.”

Hubert’s grin slipped. “Are you thinking these women left town on their own?”

Will shook his head. “No. I think our UNSUB decided to keep a stable.”


	9. Chapter 9

Will is tired at the end of the day and relieved to go back to the hotel. Price and Zeller never made it to the precinct, but texted they were having drinks in the hotel bar if Hannibal and Will wanted to join them. Will would love a drink but doesn’t want the social interaction, so declines for the both of them.

In their room, Hannibal pulls a bottle out of his suitcase. “For you,” he says.

Will has heard of the brand and knows it’s expensive. For once he doesn’t feel guilty about someone spending money on him, only grateful he can have a drink. It’s a nice thing about Hannibal. He only ever does things he wants to, so there’s no point ever feeling guilty when he puts himself out—also, he’s a murderer, so he’s probably earned any discomfort he experiences. “Ice?” Will asks.

“I’ll go get it,” Hannibal says. He pushes Will into a plush chair and shuts off all the nearby lamps, softening the edges of Will’s sensory overload.

Will closes his eyes and listens to Hannibal softly flip through the services booklet and grab the ice bucket, and then leave the room. He comes back a few moments later, and by then, Will has opened his eyes, and is looking out over the city lights. The roar in his ears has quieted, and he watches Hannibal pour his drink with precise, elegant movements.

Hannibal walks over and hands him the glass.

“Thank you,” Will says. He allows a finger to trail along the side of Hannibal’s hand as he takes the glass, staring into his eyes as he does so, just to see. Hannibal doesn’t change expression—or is that a slight upturn in the corner of his mouth? Will sniffs the whiskey and then takes a drink, groaning with appreciation.

Hannibal is still standing in front of Will, too close, not close enough, and asks, “Room service?”

Will nods. “You know what I like. Choose for me.”

Hannibal steps over to the desk and makes the call for room service. Somehow Hannibal being here with him makes the business hotel’s bland décor seem decadent. Hannibal’s leg brushes his as he walks over to take Will’s glass, which he hadn’t even realized he’d emptied. “Another?”

Will nods, and Hannibal goes through the ritual again. Will can’t remember someone preparing a drink for him being this sensual before. Will stands before Hannibal comes back, and puts a hand on Hannibal’s arm. “Try it. It’s very nice.”

Hannibal sips from Will’s glass and his eyes close in satisfaction, and then he opens them and hands the glass to Will. Will deliberately turns the glass so that his lips will touch the glass exactly where Hannibal’s had and takes a drink.

Hannibal inhales sharply. “Will—”

A knock on the door interrupts whatever he was going to say. It’s Price, saying they’re about to eat, and Hannibal claims Will has a headache and they’ve already ordered room service. Will goes into the bathroom while Hannibal’s distracted, horrified at whatever he’d been trying to do.

What had Hannibal been about to say? Will, I feel strongly for you, but not like that? Will, your social skills are bad but I didn’t realize they were bizarre? Will, people stopped coming on to each other like that 200 years ago?

Or even more disturbing, Will, I want you, too?

Hannibal had said his feelings were romantic, but not sexual. Will isn’t sure what he’d been trying to do. Isn't sure if he wants Hannibal sexually, romantically—even as a friend. All of those things require trust, and he doesn’t trust Hannibal, does he?

He trusts him to conceal their deal with Jack, to prepare him food, to sleep in the same house with him, to allow him to insulate Will from the world, to watch his back in dangerous situations, to help him professionally…in what situation, exactly, does he _not_ trust Hannibal?

Will turns on the shower and washes quickly, then dries himself and goes out into the hotel room wearing a towel around his waist.

“There are robes in the wardrobe,” Hannibal says.

Will puts on a robe and hangs up the towel, and then the arrival of the food keeps them from more discussion. Hannibal ordered him pasta, and explains in detail why he felt Will needed carbohydrates as Will tucks into the food.

After, Will leans back, full. “Thank you for taking care of me.”

Hannibal puts down his silverware. He’s still got a lot of food on his plate because he eats slowly, with refined movements. He reaches over and grabs Will’s wrist. “Thank you so much for allowing me to take care of you.”

Will shrugs. Hannibal has always tried to take care of Will. Probably with countless different motives that Will could understand if he used his gift to do so, but that would likely not do much but piss him off. Will pulls his hand away, gets up, puts on his sleepwear, and lies down to sleep as Hannibal finishes his meal.

The next morning after breakfast, Will is brimming with questions for the investigators, mostly about building underground bunkers in the desert. He wants to know if people squat much on the open expanse of desert or if there would be property titles and building permits they could search, if there are existing underground compounds the police know about that might be abandoned, and if being under the ground would make it cooler.

“Did you dream that?” Hannibal asks, “That he’s taking them underground?”

Will shrugs. “Sometimes my thought process is clearer after a good night’s sleep. Not necessarily dreams, but connections I hadn’t quite made awake come together.”

“We have that in common. Many people less self-aware would mistake that process for inspiration.”

Will can think of several comments to make about self-awareness, and how if he really had it, it hadn’t helped him much, but he bites his tongue as Hubert walks up and gives starts answering Will’s inquiries from the previous day, and the ones he’d just made. He feels his thoughts scattering a little at all the information.

Hannibal seems to sense this and places a hand on his arm. “Perhaps your thoughts will come together after we see the places the women were taken from.”

A uni takes Will and Hannibal to all of the apartments and Will found more evidence to support the idea that the kidnapper had taken the women and some of their possessions, including toothbrushes and medication that they’d discovered one of the women needed.

“He’s taking care of them,” Hannibal says.

Will picks up a ceramic dog and puts it down again on the table. “Or he wants them to think he’s going to keep them alive.”

Back at the precinct, Hannibal brings up the subject again: “Presuming he _is_ keeping them alive…would he be keeping three different women for his personal gratification, or is there perhaps more than just one man involved?” Hannibal asks.

Will seizes on the question. “It’s possible he has sexual problems and thinks variety might help. They might be just for him. And they might be dead. Just because we’re not finding bodies doesn’t mean he’s definitely not killing them. But I take your point. You mean has he taken them because he’s populating a brothel? Or a stable not just for himself but for his friends? Interesting.”

Will hadn’t thought about more than one person being involved. It could be two different types of killers who were compatible, like he and Hannibal were. One might want to keep the women for sexual gratification, and one might want the thrill of control over them, or to hurt or kill them. Or it might be, as Hannibal suggested, a business arrangement. 

“If you’re right about this being something the kidnapper wants to share, how would he advertise it?” Will asks.

“The dark web, or something more private? A group of friends?”

Hubert crosses his arms. “What about those Red Pill Men’s Rights Activists? I can’t imagine they’d openly discuss something like this, but it wouldn’t hurt to check the local group out.”

Will is a little surprised the older man is so up on these things, as he’d always thought MRA was just a weird Reddit fad, but Hubert goes on to explain how he’d recently put a rapist away who had belonged to a very active local group of men who had been inspired by the ‘movement’, and Hubert had suspected his sexual assaults had been encouraged by other members of the group but he hadn’t been able to find any proof.

Price cuts in. “You don’t happen to still have the rapist who was a known member’s computer in evidence, do you? If you let the FBI analysists go through it, they might be able to find things you wouldn’t be able to.”

Will remembers his days as a cop and cringes a little, thinking Hubert might take offense on behalf of his own tech-guys, but his eyes seem to actually twinkle, and he goes to check.

Zeller raises an eyebrow. “Jack was right about this guy. He’s not your average small town cop.”

Will glances at Hannibal. Not only would the hunt involve hunting someone, or several people, potentially strong and violent ones, but doing so under the nose of a police department that was particularly dialed in. Will wondered if this was one of the situations where he and Hannibal should just try to catch the guy alive instead of killing him.

Hannibal shrugs slightly. “If there is a group of men egging each other on to commit sexual assaults, ones the law hasn’t been able to prosecute, there’s potentially a lot of evidence to sift through.”

Will knows what he is really saying—what he would say if Price and Zeller weren’t around. If they couldn’t kill the kidnapper, they’d find someone who deserved to die easily enough. Jack didn’t need to know, although he might be fine with this one. Will certainly won’t argue about it this time.

They decline to eat with Price and Zeller again, and then Jack arrives. Will has to update him on the case so far, and Hannibal waits in the room while Will meets Jack at the bar.

“What’s it like, working with Hannibal?” Jack asks after being briefed.

Will shrugs. “Less weird than you’d think. I understand all those private cannibalism jokes he was always smirking at now, at least.”

Jack guffaws. “I’m sorry. Having you live with Hannibal—it’s not a long-term solution. I’ll find another way.”

“He’s not interested in another way. It’s this or we put him in jail and swallow the bad press at having worked with him for ages without realizing what he was. It’s not the worst thing, living in a mansion with a gourmet cook. I got some of my dogs back, so I’m not complaining.”

Jack shakes his head. “I’m sorry I got you involved with Hannibal at all, but you did always have a friendly relationship with the guy. I know what it’s like to be able to see the good in someone like that. The other day we were talking about Jeffery Dahmer—he was the nicest guy I interviewed for the BSU. I was actually sad to lose his insights when he was murdered. I know you have Hannibal’s number and had it long before I did, so this is a bit rich coming from me, but—”

“—don’t forget who Hannibal is? Like I could,” Will says. “You met Jeffery Dahmer in prison. You never saw his crime scenes, or were his brainwashing victim. He never fed you his kills.”

Jack frowns. “Okay, so you can’t forget who Hannibal is. How are you able to live with him, then?”

Will can’t exactly say that Hannibal had used the brainwashing to encourage Will’s dark side, and Will was fairly certain it had worked. Or that he’d started to see the copycat murders as a conversation between him and Hannibal which had made him better at his job, and maybe saved lives. He can’t exactly say that some people deserved to die and he was happy to be the one who took them out, by Hannibal’s side.

Will shrugs. “Hannibal stays in his lane. I’m not sure why he’s doing it, or how long he’ll stay cooperative. But he seems perfectly happy with the arrangement and makes life as pleasant for me as he can. If I stop finding the arrangement tolerable, I’ll let you know.”

When he goes back to his room, Hannibal wordlessly makes him a drink and hands it to him. He drinks it gratefully, thinking the expensive whiskey seems even smoother tonight. Hannibal crowds into his space, running his palm up Will’s arm. “Did you eat?”

Will nods.

Hannibal laughs. “You’re lying.” He moves over to the fridge, opens it, and produces a plate with club sandwich on it. “I thought out of all the menu items, it alone might taste adequate cold. I suspected you wouldn't allow me to order room service again, but you would eat this if it was here already.”

Will sits on his bed and eats half the sandwich before he asks. “How did you know I was lying from a nod?”

Hannibal shrugs. “It wasn’t knowing you, but knowing Jack. He’s not very good at taking care of you.”

“He was concerned about me sacrificing my time to supervise you.”

Hannibal sits down on the armchair and crosses his legs in a move that reminds Will of their therapy sessions. “Oh? And what did you say to him?”

“I said it’s worth it for the food alone, but guessing how outrageous your suit will be every morning is an added bonus,” Will says. He smiles slightly, aware in some part of his brain that he’s flirting. He wasn’t even aware he knew how.

Hannibal stands. “Another drink?”

Will nods, and Hannibal goes to get it.

“Why don’t you want to kill me? I mean, no. Not that. Before you had any kind of feelings for me, what made you interested in me? Was it my mind? My empathy, or…imagination? My encephalitis?”

Hannibal busies himself getting Will’s drink and speaks with his back to Will. “Great hunters throughout the world can take on characteristics of their prey. They make bird calls, mimic behavior, find out everything about where their prey lives and what they do. That’s what you do, when you examine the evidence. You seem to be almost designed by evolution to be able to hunt killers. I recognized the tactic because that’s what I do when I’m hunting people, too. I like to think I hunt those who can fight back. Perhaps I’m physically stronger than some, but if a man larger than myself deserves to die I am up to the challenge. I consider myself particularly dangerous amongst killers. But you make the killers themselves your prey.”

He turns around and hands Will his drink. Will holds it in his hand. He considers Hannibal’s words. It finally explains to him why Hannibal would change his design. He thought Will’s design was tougher—so he’d changed the settings on his video game from ‘normal’ to ‘hard’ by killing killers. It also explained that snake and mongoose metaphor that he'd used, which had confused the hell out of Will at the time. 

But he still didn’t understand everything. “At first, were you interested in me because you thought I could catch you? That’s why you messed with my mind—why you set me up? You were afraid of me?”

“Afraid might be overstating it. But I saw the potential in you, to catch me.”

“And that made you want to get close to me and be my friend—to throw me off the scent?”

“No, my dear, it made me respect you.”

Will stands. He crowds into Hannibal’s space. “You know deference is synonym for respect. Do you feel deferential towards me?”

Hannibal laughs softly, his face so close Will can feel Hannibal’s breath on his face. “There’s no denying I’ve agreed to an arrangement where I’m required to do what you say, and at times I even find myself enjoying it. But be honest, Will. Are you asking if I want you to dominate me?” 

Will closes his eyes. He can smell Hannibal’s skin. “Well?”

Hannibal moves away, and fixes himself a drink. “I suppose I’m saying that if anyone _could_ dominate me, it would be you.”

That shuts Will up until he falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I once read a book by John E. Douglas, the real inspiration for Jack Crawford, and the part about him liking Jeffery Dahmer better than any other killer he interviewed and being sad about his death because of all they could have learned from him is something I think I remember from the book? I could be wrong though I read it a million years ago. And honestly I just watched a documentary on Jeffery Dahmer, and I think he was the inspiration for Hannibal, the TV version (or even the version from the book Hannibal). Like the whole drilling into people’s brains and trying to lobotomize people and turn them into zombies he can control thing is pretty obviously taken from him, and I don’t think appeared in the original two books, which were written before Dahmer was caught.


	10. Chapter 10

Hannibal didn’t sleep much after his conversation with Will, but he heard Will snoring softly almost immediately. It made him wonder if their conversation the previous night hadn’t meant the same thing to Will as it had to Hannibal, as it didn’t weigh on Will enough to keep him up. That wouldn’t surprise him. Will had developed an interesting habit of thinking about Hannibal out loud to Hannibal. Hannibal liked it, because that way he knew what was on his beloved’s mind, but he tried not to take Will’s thoughts as gospel. He was sure that sometimes Will was just talking things out. Probably had something to do with Hannibal having been his therapist at one point—or the fact that Will knew he couldn’t hurt Hannibal’s feelings, or possibly didn’t care if he did at this point.

Hannibal, Will, Price and Zeller had breakfast together in the hotel, and then they headed to the precinct. Price and Zeller went off to follow the leads they’d started looking into the other day, and Jack, who’d been there for hours, judging by the creases on his trousers, walked up to Will and Hannibal.

“We have a lead,” he said, “The MRA group Hubert was talking about—they held several events at a local private bar. A bar that serves a surprisingly affluent clientele. Members have to pay a five thousand dollar initial fee for membership, and there’s a dress code.”

Will frowned. “Is the MRA group filled with rich people in this town?”

Jack shook his head. “They are not. Which leads me to believe that the owner of the club, or someone who has access to booking, might be sympathetic to their cause and giving them free access.”

Will’s eyebrows drew together. “This club…Is there a provision for guests?”

“What are you thinking, Will?” Jack asked.

“We should send Hannibal in. He has the rich, well-dressed thing down pat. If he put his name forward, or Hubert found someone in the club to put his name forward as a prospective member, they would show him around. Probably show him some of the perks of membership.”

“You’re still thinking that the girls are being used in some kind of brothel?” Hannibal asked.

Will nodded. “Our guy is definitely trying to exhibit visionary killer characteristics. However, we both feel it’s a little off. It seems…fake. So what better way to disguise a commercial motive than to fake a different motivation?”

“Plus, if he’s caught, he’s got an insanity plea primed,” Jack put in. He nodded. “I’ll get Hubert to see if he knows someone we can persuade to sponsor Hannibal at the club. Hannibal, you’ll have to be wired up in some way. I know that Will hasn’t been using your tracker outside of Baltimore much, but you’ll need to switch it on, or find another solution.”

Hannibal waited until Jack walked away, and then leaned close to Will. “Why have you been neglecting my tracker?”

Will shrugged. “We can explain away being in Cleveland at the same time that murder took place, but I didn’t want there to be a record of you being in the murdered guy’s house at the time of the murder.”

“Surely that would be something you could hold over my head.”

Will leaned closer. “I don’t think I need anything like that to convince you to stay close to me,” he said, and then he walked over to talk to Jack.

Hannibal took a minute to compose himself, and then followed.

Will was speaking, apparently defending the decision to send Hannibal in to Hubert. “If they do a background check they’ll find a rich, European aristocratic man with no official connection to the police. He looks the part and can fit in anywhere.”

“But a civilian can’t just conduct police business.”

Hannibal raised a placating hand. “Consider me a temporary confidential informant. I promise you I won’t do anything to interfere. I’ll just look, listen, and report back.” 

Hubert grudgingly agreed, and he called someone he knew from the list of members they’d managed to procure. He implied that they were close to an arrest and if something suspicious was found at the club, it would taint everyone on the membership list, and the only way to make sure and avoid prosecution was to help.

Hubert put the phone down. “He seems like he’s gung-ho to make sure there’s nothing bad going on at his club. Hopefully he hasn’t warned everyone to hide the bodies.”

Hannibal shrugged off his impatience at the idiocies of law enforcement. He could have gotten himself into the club easily enough, but his methods would have raised suspicion about how he’d done it, and if it was legal. He sighed and turned his attention to Will, who was talking to Price and Zeller about something. The corners of Will’s mouth betrayed his tension, and his arms were crossed in a kind of self-embrace. He was feeling the effects of being in the small conference room with a bunch of people already, and they’d only just got there. Hannibal felt a pang of sympathy for him, and then wondered at it. Perhaps Hannibal truly had expanded his empathy when he fell for Will.

They worked away following the various strings of the investigation for the rest of the day, and arranged the invite for that evening. At the end of the workday, Will and Hannibal went back to the hotel so Hannibal could change into his evening wear. He did so quickly, and in the bathroom, leaving Will to decompress and work out the tracking hardware he and Price had decided that Hannibal should use.

He shaved, used a bespoke aftershave he liked, moisturized, applied an expensive hair serum, and donned an immaculately tailored plaid suit.

Hannibal emerged from the bathroom and Will looked up from his phone and looked Hannibal up and down. “Well, you certainly look the part.”

Hannibal raised an eyebrow. “I look like someone who needs to buy sex?”

Will walked over and smoothed a hand down Hannibal’s shoulder, though Hannibal knew the coat had already been hanging perfectly. “You look like an important man who could buy and sell most people in this town, if you chose to.”

Hannibal leaned closer. “Could I buy you? What currency would I make such a purchase in, and for how much?”

Will shivered and turned away. “Blood, of course. And I think you already paid it. What about you?”

Hannibal put both hands on Will’s shoulders and stood behind him as he looked at the sky darkening over the city. “I give myself freely to you, Will.”

Will sighed. “I want to kiss you. Is that something you’d be interested in?”

“Forgive me, but you don’t seem to be in the mood to kiss me right now. You seem down. What’s going on?”

Will turned around and laughed wryly. “I guess I’m used to you hugging me, and so I wanted you to hold me, but I didn’t want to mess up your suit. And then I thought about what you said about your feelings for me being romantic and not sexual, and I was afraid to ask you if I could kiss you. And then I remembered you’re a serial killer who tried to eat me, and I thought if you can get over me sending someone to kill you, you can get over me asking to kiss you if you don’t want me to.”

Hannibal smiled. “Will, I’m in love with you. And attracted to you. I never thought you reciprocated. And so I never allowed myself to imagine such a relationship, because I didn’t want to tarnish our friendship if it wasn’t what you wanted.”

Will nodded. “Okay. Okay, that’s good.” He didn’t make any move to actually kiss Hannibal, though.

Hannibal stepped closer. “You’ve been wanting me to kiss you, have you?”

Will’s back hit the window with a thud. He nodded.

Hannibal leaned forward and kissed Will’s cheek, his forehead, his chin, and then finally his mouth. It was an innocent, closed-mouth affair at first, and then Will surged forward, snaking his arms around Hannibal’s neck. Somewhere inside of him Hannibal wanted to smirk and ‘I guess you find me interesting after all’, but it wasn’t the time for that. Will was still tentative, and Hannibal was shocked they were here. He put his hand on the small of Will’s back and pulled him closer, relieved he hadn’t left all this behind just out of pride. Will opened his mouth and Hannibal licked at his tongue, surprised at how intoxicating kissing was when you actually felt something for the person you were kissing.

Will pulled away, panting and leaning his head against the window. “You’re not just…doing this as some manipulation, are you?”

“What kind of manipulation would that be?”

Will rolled his eyes and walked over to the bar, picked up the bottle of whiskey and put it down again. “Like with Alana. To get me in line better. On your side. You wanted her to doubt me and believe you, so you had sex with her. Is that what you’re doing here?”

Hannibal frowned. “What would my goal be?”

Will threw up his hands. “To increase my dopamine. To make me fall for you, or cement my feelings. To foster intimacy and dependency so that I can’t imagine my life without you.”

“I can see why you would think that. But Will, I’ve never felt the way I just felt kissing you before. Sex has always been a means to an end, just like you observed. But with you, I feel the dopamine. The intimacy. The trust. You know me like no one else I’ve ever been this close to has ever known me. And I want intimacy with you, if you can trust me that way. I know you’re attracted now. And you know I’m attracted now.”

Will nodded. “I suppose I’m not going to be able to have sex with anyone else, I might as well do it with you.”

Hannibal tilted his head. “Would you want to have sex with anyone else at this point?”

Will laughed. “Dating would be fun. I can just imagine explaining the situation on the first date. ‘You seem like a nice girl and I want to hang out and have sex sometimes, but I’m living with a male serial-killing-cannibal and we’re in love with each other.’”

“That does sound like more of a second date conversation.” Hannibal paused, then continued, “So you’ve decided you love me after all?”

Will rolled his eyes. It was becoming a habit of his. “Like you didn’t know that. Now. Let me get you set up, and then you can go do weird decadent rich-guy stuff while the FBI and the Yuma police force listens in.”

Hannibal took the phone Will handed him and allowed Will to pin a tracker on the lining of his suit jacket, then went down to the hotel lobby where he had been instructed to meet Jack with the member they had coerced into taking him to the club.

Will was going to follow discreetly behind with Hubert. Even though they knew the location of the club, it was unlikely they were keeping women in the club itself. If the kidnappings had any involvement at all with the club, it was likely that they were being held at a second location.

Jack sat at the bar with a man who looked like a car salesman or a real estate agent, overweight and red-faced in a cheap suit. If he was indicative of what most of the affluent members were like, they would probably fall all over themselves to get Hannibal into their little club, considering he had real money, and connections to real European aristocrats and such. If Americans still bothered to care about such things. Hannibal imagined the ones who would pay five thousand dollars to avoid sitting with the poor likely would care a great deal about ridiculous concepts like aristocracy.

The man looked up at Hannibal as he walked over. “I’m not sure where I’m going to say I met _you_.” 

Hannibal smiled benignly and extended his hand for the rube to shake. “If you need me to think of a lie, I would be happy to. I’m comfortable with stretching the truth for a good cause.”

Jack glared, and Hannibal felt an unreasonable amount of internal glee. Pissing off Jack and kissing Will on the same night? He could get used to this.


	11. Chapter 11

Will listens with Hubert and Jack in the communications van as Hannibal charms everyone, and wonders idly if he’s as gullible as they are, believing he’s something special to Hannibal. The man who agreed to show Hannibal around just lets him do his thing.

Hubert turns to Jack. “This is a civilian? How is he so good at this?”

Jack sighs. “He’s a psychiatrist. And a bit of a chameleon, to be honest.”

Hannibal sleazes around the room—or that’s what the audio makes it sound like he’s doing—saying the kinds of macho things that might appeal to the kind of people who routinely pay for sex, or who would want to take part in the degradation of a human being. Will tries to tune it out. Everything he says just reinforces the fact that Hannibal can play people like he plays his Theremin—and in this he also has perfect pitch. 

He tunes back in as Hannibal tells an off-color joke about sleeping with his patients because in certain moods they’re pliable, and Will avoids Jack’s eyes.

Hubert frowns. “He’s a little too good at this, don’t you think?”

Will can’t help but respond. “He’s a socially brilliant man who’s playing the part we asked him to play. He specializes in abnormal psychology and can easily put himself in the position of the kind of person you’re looking for.”

Jack nods in Will’s direction. “Will’s taking a bit of offense because usually people look at him like he’s the freak. He puts himself in the minds of serial killers for a living, and occasionally people think he’s a little too good at it.”

Hubert squints. “Well, why didn’t we send you in, then Will?”

“I don’t like to talk, and I’m not, you know, good with people. And I don’t have any fancy clothes. Or know anything about how to talk to rich people.”

Jack holds up a hand. “He’s got someone offering to take him to a place with girls.”

“Hopefully it’s not just a strip club or something,” Will mutters.

They listen as Hannibal agrees to ride with the second man, and the guy who had introduced Hannibal to the club bows out and stays behind.

They shout directions to the driver, following the tracking device Will had fitted for Hannibal rather than trying to subtly follow them in a big ass van. They go out on the freeway, and then onto a dirt road. There are houses on the expansive lots, but it’s certainly not suburban living. There’s no grass on the lawns, and though some of the houses are big, they’re all in disrepair and some have old cars on the lawn.

“Weird place for a strip club,” Jack says.

“This used to be a town, but the chair factory closed down. Now folks do what they can to get by, but a lot of them are on assistance. It would be a good place for a brothel because the police out here aren’t well equipped. Not much of a tax-base out here these days,” Hubert responds.

No one mentions jurisdiction. They don’t have the best argument for going out of Hubert’s precinct’s territory—they’re really following a hunch, since they have no concrete reason to believe Hannibal will find the kidnapped girls wherever he ends up, and so they could get in trouble despite the FBI involvement. Maybe that’s another reason Hubert didn’t argue too hard about Hannibal doing the undercover work.

The tracker takes them to a big house with a bunch of cars parked out front. It looks more like a house party than a brothel, but maybe the party never stopped. The driver finds a parking spot just down the road from the house and they refocus on the conversation going on inside the house. 

Hannibal and the guy he’s with are saying disgusting things about the girls, and finally Hannibal sounds like he’s going into a private room with a girl. His mic goes dead.

“Will?” Jack asks, as though Will somehow knows what’s going on.

Will shrugs.

“He wouldn’t turn off the mic to have sex with one of the girls, would he?” Hubert asks.

“No,” Will says. “He would think that was rude. Either someone’s made him, or his mic got knocked offline. Is it possible that the brothel has equipment to knock out radio communication?”

“The mic you used is cellular. You can block cell service,” Jack says.

Hubert takes out his phone. “This might just be a dead zone or a partial dead zone for whatever carrier the FBI uses. I only have a bar on my cell. This is the wild west out here.”

Jack looks at Will. “Is Hannibal going to be okay in there?”

Will shrugs. “He’s pretty darn capable. But I guess I should check on him.”

Will hides his FBI credentials in his back pocket, and is thankful he’s in an open carry state so he won’t have to leave his gun behind. He walks in the front door. It doesn’t look like a brothel, although he’s never really been to one before, and has never worked in vice so doesn’t know a lot about them. It seems like a house party with scantily clad girls, most of whom are occupied with guys already. No one notices Will as he ducks behind the stairs and into a hallway that leads to back rooms. He listens at a few doors and then hears a kind of long-winded murmur that he just knows is Hannibal.

He knocks.

A very pretty blond girl who looks way too young to be a sex worker, but who is probably at least eighteen, answers the door. “Occupied.”

“I gotta talk to my friend a minute,” he slurs.

“Not right now,” the girl says sharply.

“Let him in, Christine,” Hannibal says from the bed.

“I don’t do couples,” she says, but she opens the door wider and lets Will in the room.

“This lovely young woman has told me something very interesting,” Hannibal says.

“Oh yeah?”

“At one time this place was a winery. There are cellars nearby that people walk out to. She doesn’t know what customers say to the owners to be invited down, or what’s in them, but word is there’s some amusements for those whose tastes run more along sadomasochistic lines. Perhaps even women who are held captive.”

Will turns to the girl. “Are you here against your will?”

She shrugs. “It’s good money. My mom is friends with the owner, so I get better treatment than most.”

Will swallows hard to avoid saying something about a mother like that. “So why are you telling us all of this?”

Hannibal answers. “I gave her some money. Why did you come in?”

“No cell service out here,” he says.

They talk a little more to the girl, make sure she really doesn’t need help, and get some more clues as to where the underground cellar might be. She says that they leave in their cars, but she’s pretty sure the place is on the property, though it’s a big property.

They give her more money and leave.

Hannibal leans close to Will and whispers. “Is my mic off, then?”

“It was but…here,” he says, and he reaches into Hannibal’s coat and deactivates it, just in case. “What did you want to say?”

“If we tell Jack and Hubert, they’ll get a warrant and swarm this place. They might find it, but they might not. Why not just do some research tonight on this place when it was a winery, and come back tomorrow on our own?” Hannibal asks, his lips grazing Will’s ear as he whispers.

“Okay. What about the guy you came here with?”

“I’ll make my excuses and tell him I called a car service,” Hannibal says. “He’s so drunk he won’t know the difference.”

Will tells Hannibal where the van is parked and walks out first, and then Hannibal follows. Once they’re all inside, they start the drive back to Yuma.

“You’re really good at that,” Hubert says, eying Hannibal suspiciously.

Hannibal’s eyebrows rise slightly. “Thank you,” he says, sidestepping the need to justify it skillfully.

“Did you hear anything about women that are being kept against their will?” Jack asks.

“No. But perhaps if I return again tomorrow and throw money around, I’ll be able to get access. I never saw the owner or manager of the establishment—Christine, the girl I spoke to, said the manager’s name is Trevor Hines. Perhaps we should investigate him tomorrow.”

“We should get a police officer in there tomorrow, undercover,” Hubert says.

“Wouldn’t you have to get permission from the local police to do that?” Will asks.

Hubert frowns. “Of course. What are you trying to say?”

Jack answers. “We don’t know this other police force. They didn’t seem to be harassing that place. What if they’ve paid off the police to be left alone? If you ask permission to send someone in, they could warn them. They’d probably shut down or move the kidnapped girls if they’re there.”

“Okay. I suppose you’re right,” Hubert says.

They go back to the hotel and Hannibal and Will look on the internet for any historical references to the winery. They don’t find anything that helps them locate where the cellars would be, but they do find that the cellars would have been dug before the local zoning office kept records, so it likely wouldn’t help to go there.

“What about this?” Will asks. He points to his computer screen.

Hannibal walks closer and casually puts a hand on Will’s shoulder. “A museum. That could a valuable source of information, although I’ve not spent a lot of time in small-town museums so I’m not sure how good their information is.”

Will smiles. “Snob. They’re a great source of information. Sometimes they’re a lot better than going to a big city museum, because the people working there know everything about the town, rather than knowing a few snippets of specialty here and there.”

Hannibal sits down close to Will. “Will you be able to get us away from the rest of the investigation tomorrow?”

Will shrugs. “Jack gave us permission to work outside the bounds of the regular investigation. If we tell him we’re going after this guy, and potentially to rescue the women, what’s he going to say? We have to follow procedure? Why bother if the end goal is us murdering the guy? So I think we can tell Jack the truth, and as for the rest of the team, we can say we’re going to the zoning office to look for underground buildings, but really go to the museum, and then if there’s time, to the cellars.”

“Hubert Guy is a very smart police officer. How will we disguise our crime?”

Will purses his lips in thought for a moment. “He really doesn’t like those MRA guys. He might have a natural bias towards seeing the worst in them. What if we made it seem like they did it? It would be a natural fit. Many of them are obsessed with female purity and hate sex workers. It would not be out of character for them to try to purge their movement of a corruptive influence like someone trying to encourage members to use prostitutes, whether willing or not.”

Hannibal’s arm snakes around Will’s shoulders. “You’re so brilliant, my dear. That sounds like a fitting end for these pathetic specimens. Those we don’t kill get hounded by the police and possibly railroaded into jail.”

Will leans into Hannibal’s embrace. “I’m tired and I miss the dogs.”

“How can I help you relax, darling?”

Possibilities flood Will’s mind, but he’s too tired to do much. “Can we share a bed tonight? I’m sure you’ve noticed I have bad dreams. It might not be the best sleep for you.”

“I would adore that,” Hannibal says. His hold on Will’s shoulders tightens. “I care very much for your wellbeing, Will, and would love to see if being close to you as you sleep might stave off bad dreams in some way.”

Will turns his head so that his nose nearly touches Hannibal’s. “Oh yeah? What’s in it for you?”

Hannibal smiles. “I get to be close to you, of course.”

Will tries to believe Hannibal really means it. 


	12. Chapter 12

Hannibal woke the next morning with an arm around Will. Despite his worries, Will seemed to sleep soundly, although Hannibal supposed he could have slept through any nightmare Will had—though he was not generally a heavy sleeper. Hannibal gathered Will closer and appreciated that he was allowed to do this now. Any reservations he still had about the arrangement he’d made with Will and Jack seemed negligible compared to the benefits. 

Will woke up without saying anything about how he slept and got ready for the day. Hannibal waited in the room as Will squared their plans with Jack. He looked on his phone for a good place to get breakfast, and then directed Will there in the rental car. Breakfast was quick and delicious.

The museum was near the restaurant, and open relatively early, so they went straight over. The curator saw them immediately, despite Will not mentioning he was a federal agent. She greeted them in a plain conference room, and knew the property they referred to by reputation. She was a bookish woman in her thirties named Elise who Hannibal immediately worried Will would find attractive, but he seemed to give her no special notice.

“I don’t know all that much about the property, but we do have a vertical file on the winery. I didn’t assemble it, so I don’t know what it contains, but it might have a drawing or a map.” She got up to get the file.

When she came back into the room she was carrying a fat file. “If you don’t mind looking at the file right here, I have some work to do in my office. If you need any part of the file photocopied, I’m happy to do that for you, although I have to charge a bit for it. A couple of dollars.”

They agreed and started sorting through the file. There were newspaper clippings, deeds and photocopies of pages out of a ledger, and there, at the bottom, was a brochure with a map of the grounds. Will took it and the rest of the file to go find Elise. Hannibal tried to figure out why he was so jealous of the idea of Will and this rather plain woman. Perhaps it was the fact that if Will ever wanted a normal life, he could find a woman like that in any town in America who would love him to pieces and make him happy enough. There was only one person in the world who could make Hannibal happy, and any number of people could likely do the same for Will. He didn’t love the math of that equation. Hannibal was not an easy person to love, and Will would be objectively smart—in the sense of self-preservation—to find someone less difficult.

He would just have to make sure he kept Will’s attention. 

When Will came back, he handed Hannibal the map and they went out to the car. Hannibal tried to figure out how to orient the map from the road as they drove. “I think you have to drive beyond the house, around a bend, and then turn onto a road. It might be slightly confusing because I think they sold off some lots along the roadside, but I’ll try to see what I can tell from the scale of the map.”

Will snickered and looked over. “You know a brochure might not be drawn to perfect scale, right?”

“Let’s assume that it is until the assumption is proven falsely optimistic.”

Will rolled his eyes, presumably at Hannibal’s turn of phrase (or perhaps at his desire to be optimistic), and sped up. When they got to the brothel, Hannibal directed Will a little beyond, and then passed two dirt roads. They turned onto a third, and then they turned off of that road about three miles later, and then drove until the road…ended.

“Do you see anything here?” Will asked, craning his head to look.

“I think I see several tire tracks in the grass. Perhaps people have been parking here?”

Will nodded and they both got out of the car. They walked around until they saw a locked door level with the ground. They tried the door, and it was locked.

“What should we do?” Will asked.

“Drive away, hide the car, and walk back here. Then we wait for someone to come back. If they have the key, not only will they be able to open the door, they will likely be the one responsible for kidnapping the girls.”

“If there are even any girls in there. If we kill the guy and he’s just looking for a case of wine from the cellar, we’ll sure have egg on our face.”

Hannibal wouldn’t mind. “If he’s a brothel employee, perhaps he’s worth killing anyway.”

Will rolled his eyes. “Don’t pretend to moralize on my account. We’re here to kill a killer, nothing else, Hannibal.”

“I have nothing against sex workers, but the parasites who make money off of sex workers and exploit them, perhaps they deserve a second look.”

“I don’t want to have a philosophical discussion here. What should we do?” Will was doing that thing where he was frustrated enough to stutter slightly, and Hannibal found it adorable.

“We do what I suggested, only we don’t kill him until we know he’s doing something you would disapprove of,” Hannibal said.

“Always with the stalking,” Will muttered, and walked back to the car.

They hid the car, and then came back and found a suitable vantage point.

“Are we going to be here until nighttime?” Will asked.

“Perhaps we’ll be here well into the night,” Hannibal said. “Stalking our prey is a worthy task no matter our comfort or how long it takes.”

Will laughed and shook his head. “If you knew this was going to happen, you could have brought us some lunch or something.”

“Oh ye of little faith my dear,” Hannibal said. He reached into his pack, which contained their murder suits and several weapons, and pulled out some sandwiches and a thermos of coffee.

“I’ve never known a predator to be so concerned with his own comfort.”

“You’re a dog person. Cat people would expect nothing else but that a predator likes to be comfortable.”

“You being a cat person explains so much. I wish you’d told me that when we met. I might have avoided you and all of this madness in the first place.”

They stopped bickering when the sound of an approaching car let them know they were no longer alone. Hannibal put the sandwiches back in his bag.

They watched as a man got out of a maroon car and took a cooler out of the back seat.

“Having a picnic?” Will whispered.

“Or feeding the captives,” Hannibal breathed back, his lips nearly touching Will's ear. Will shuddered and Hannibal resisted the urge to touch him, to see if he could make him truly shudder.

They watched as he lugged the cooler over to the door, took a key out of his pocket, and unlocked it, then opened the door and went inside, leaving the door open.

“Shall we follow?” Hannibal asked.

“We should wear a disguise. If there are women in there we want to rescue…”

“Living victims are such an inconvenience. But sometimes inconveniences are worth the trouble. I bought these masks for us.” Hannibal reached into his bag as pulled out some rubber masks.

“What don’t you have in your bag?” Will asked.

Hannibal just grinned enigmatically and put the mask on. They were both clown masks, and Hannibal hoped none of the victims suffered from Coulrophobia. Will put on his mask, pulled his gun out of its holster, and proceeded down the stairs, with Hannibal following close behind.

They snuck down the stairs and found themselves in a stone cellar. They followed the sound of soft voices down a long, open room, and around a corner. Will looked over and then gestured for Hannibal to take a turn doing the same. Hannibal saw a series of doors, one of which was open. He nodded to Will and Will went around the corner. He snuck down the hallway, and then went through the door. Hannibal hung back, in case Will got himself into a bad situation. A moment later, the man they’d seen with the cooler walked out the door with his hands up.

Hannibal reached into his bag and took out a zip tie, and wrested the man’s arms behind his back and tied them together.

Will pushed the butt of the gun into the man’s forehead. “The women you took. Are they all here?”

“The key’s in the lock. But I didn’t take the girls. I’m just supposed to feed them.”

“He’s telling the truth,” a voice from inside the door said.

Will nodded towards the man. “You watch him. I’ll go talk to her.”

Hannibal nodded and watched Will walk in the room and sit down beside the girl. Hannibal looked in and saw the girl was shackled to the bed. “Do you have the keys to free the girl from her shackles?”

The man jutted his head towards the keys in the lock and Hannibal took them out and threw them to Will, who caught them deftly. “The keys to the shackles,” Hannibal said.

Will unlocked her shackles and then helped her into the other room, whispering with her softly as they unlocked the doors together.

Hannibal looked over at the man he held captive. “What’s your name?”

“Tommy.”

“Do you know who kidnapped these women?”

Tommy nodded. “I can take you to him. I don’t know where he lives but I know where he hangs out. A real creature of habit.”

When Will came back, they decided that the women could drive themselves to the police station in Tommy’s car, and Hannibal and Will would go with Tommy to find the murderer. Maybe if Will’s sensibilities were feeling offended, they would kill both of them. Hannibal doubted it, but a little hope never hurt anyone.

Will came to take over from Hannibal and held the gun on Tommy, and Hannibal gave the women a cursory look. Two of them seemed physically fine, but the third was shaking and sweating. The source of her problem was an infection on her arm where her shackles had rubbed up against her skin.

Hannibal patted her hand. “A slight infection. You should all go to the hospital to be checked out, but make sure they see this wound.”

She nodded. “Will I be okay?”

“Of course. The infection might even burn out some of the bad experiences from your mind.”

They bundled the girls up and gave them directions to the police station, and then sent them on their way. They walked back to their own car, forcing Tommy to walk in front of them at gunpoint.

Hannibal tried to engage Will in conversation, but with no success. Will held himself stiffly and refused to look at him. It was like when Will was in jail all over again. He wasn’t sure what he’d done to annoy Will this time. They trussed Tommy up with two more zip ties—hog tied, him, in fact, and put a blanket over his head—and then they took off their masks.

Hannibal pulled Will away from the car. “I’ve upset you. What have I done to make you so upset?”

Will looked down at the grass. “I just have to know something. My encephalitis. Were you trying to burn Garret Jacob Hobbs out of my brain?”

Hannibal felt a stab of admiration for the way Will’s mind worked. One comment to the girl about an infection, and insight had bloomed in Will’s mind. “Would that upset you?”

Will rounded on him, agitated in a way he hadn’t been in a long time. “Yes!”

“Why is that, exactly?”

Will laughed wryly. “All this time. All this time I thought that you were trying to take away my conscience or empathy or something. To make me more like you. But I was already like you. From the second day we interacted, I saw myself as Hobbs and you knew that we were the same and you tried to…what, cure me? You experimented on me. Were you trying to see if you could burn the urge to kill out of my brain? To see if you could use the same method on yourself to be normal?”

Hannibal shrugged. “It’s a perfectly normal human urge to want to fit in. To be one of the human throng.”

“But it didn’t work. And then what?”

“And then you went to prison, and I missed you. You thought I set you up, that I wanted you in jail. But it was never my intention for you to be caught. I wanted you to come to me, and we could run away together.”

“You wanted to use the fact that I was wanted for the copycat murders against me. To control me, the same way you used Abagail killing Nicholas Boyle to get her to do what you said.” 

“Yes. But you misunderstand. I wasn’t trying to burn the urge to kill out of you. I was happy you had that. I’ve always adored the fact that we’re so different, and yet so drawn to one another and your desire to kill is part of why we’re drawn to each other. That fellow feeling. What I wanted to burn out of you was Garret Jacob Hobbs. I even wondered if your amazing body created that infection specifically to get rid of him, like he’s a contagion. Encephalitis could be therapeutic—don’t give me that look, LSD is therapeutic, it helps our brain reset, like turning a computer off and on again. The hallucinations the encephalitis gave you might have been your brain purging him.”

“I never thought I was Hobbs. Not really.”

Hannibal gave Will a stern look. “I know you were infected by thoughts you were Hobbs. There was a point when the Hobbs part of your brain was so strong I thought your personality had fractured, like you had multiple personalities. When you imagined yourself places you saw yourself as him, not you. I know you were obsessed with Abigail, and that it was more Hobbs’ obsession than yours. He took you over. I wanted to purge you of him. I wanted you to be who you really are, not a pale imitation of a man I had little respect for in the first place.”

“But the urge to kill came from Hobbs.”

Hannibal shook his head. “I don’t think it did. I think you were in Hobbs’ mentality when you first felt satisfaction and power from killing, so you believed it was Hobbs taking over your thoughts. You liked Abigail and that reinforced your feelings of connection with Hobbs’ point of view. But saying you only wanted to kill because of your preoccupation is simply a way to evade the realization that you yourself, Will Graham, wanted to kill.”

Will paled. “Is that why you tried to convince me I killed Abigail? You wanted me to resolve the desire—Hobbs’ desire, which I won’t deny I shared—to kill Abigail? But you liked her, too. She was a killer, like you. So you faked her death.”

Hannibal nodded. “I confess, when it didn't work, my original intention was to kill her in front of you, and hurt you to the point you might die, in the hopes that seeing her die would stir something in you. Wake up Will, and put Garret Jacob Hobbs in the ground where he belongs forever. But I decided that perhaps changing your relationship with killing might help instead. If you shared my new method of killing killers, rather than just hunting them, perhaps your Hobbs problem would go away. You know how strongly I feel about the therapeutic value of murder.”

Will wiped a hand down his face. “If that’s all true, then I probably shouldn’t see Abigail.”

Hannibal shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps it will reinforce your feelings that you are her father, but perhaps it will serve to show you she’s not any kind of ideal. Certainly she complains enough about the isolation I put her in to hide her from Jack that spending time with her is rarely a pleasure for me.”

Will frowned. “When you got upset about Jack putting my mind at risk…you were being sincere,” he murmured.

“You are rare and beautiful. Precious. Not fragile, but someone who deserves to be cherished and taken care of. I can take care of you Will, in any way you’d like. In any way you’ll allow me to.”

Will crossed his arms. “You never thought about just telling me this, instead of letting me think the worst? Letting me think you let my encephalitis run rampant to see what happened. Letting me think you set me up to see me in jail and take over my job with Jack. Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?”

“Knowing what you know about me, I was sure you would think the worst regardless of my rationale. I didn’t think you would ever let go of that bias against me.”

Will shook his head. “So you really…you were trying to help me? All this time. Like you did with Margot? Therapy, but unorthodox to the point of madness? I suppose you suggested I killed people to get Garett Jacob Hobb’s methodology out of my brain?”

“Of course. I find it interesting that you fell in love with me while still thinking the worst of me. How do you feel about me now?”

Will’s expression dissolved into tenderness. “I guess I still love you, but now I don’t feel like such an idiot for it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I did a rewatch of all the Hannibal and Will scenes again, and this time, weirdly, I noticed completely different things than I did the last time. I noticed that Hannibal really seemed sincere in his concern for Will’s mental health, and his observation that Will’s personality had splintered seemed correct. And I got convinced that the things I said in this passage between Hannibal and Will were actually (maybe not the whole truth, but) one valid interpretation of Hannibal’s actions. And in the TV version, when Will actually sees Hannibal kill Abigail, the feathered stag dies, symbolizing that his connection to Hobbs is gone. Am I crazy?? I seem to be the only person who has this interpretation. Anyway, this is not meant to be OOC but is my actual interpretation of season one and two...controversal as that might be. I'm actually glad I landed on this interpretation because I had a real problem with the encephalitis plot line and Hannibal setting Will up (because it seemed like he was just doing random evil with no rationale), and although I never liked Abigail, I certainly never understood why Hannibal killed her, and this interpretation actually makes all of those things make sense to me. So that's my explanation. I totally get it if you don't buy Hannibal's explanation, but it makes perfect sense to me :)


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed the name of the dude they have trussed up in the truck of the car from “Jimmy” to “Tommy” because I had forgotten that Price’s first name was Jimmy.

Will taps his fingers nervously on center console. “Are you sure this is the place?”

Hannibal nods. “Tommy was quite specific. Are you regretting not asking him yourself?”

Will sighs. “I suppose if I doubt your persuasive techniques, I could get him out of the trunk and ask him myself. He is still able to speak, isn’t he?”

“I told you I wouldn’t damage him permanently without your permission.”

Will nods, and ruminates on how long Hannibal’s obedience is going to last. If he does break free of his self-imposed metaphorical shackles, the fallout will be spectacular. Will almost wants to see what Hannibal would do—but the longer Hannibal stays obedient, the longer they can stay in this all too temporary-seeming situation. Will can’t stop himself from poking the bear, just to see. “And how did it feel, to be obedient to my wishes?”

Hannibal smiles, an avid look in his eyes. “I can’t tell if you’re flirting with me or trying to enrage me. Though between you and me, there’s rarely a difference between the two.” He reaches over and runs the back of his fingers gently over Will’s cheek. “I find it quite natural to be obedient towards you in some things, the same way you are able to follow my lead in circumstances where I am the expert. You’re my equal. My other half, dear Will.”

Will leans over and pecks Hannibal’s lips, drawing out a satisfyingly surprised look on Hannibal’s face. It’s one of Will’s favorite things, to ruffle the feathers of the unflappable Dr. Lector. “Like I’d flirt on a stakeout. Get your mind on the game, Hannibal. We’ve got a killer to stalk.”

Hannibal lets loose a huff of indignation and turns back to look at the apartment building. “Would you rather confront the man directly? We have a witness who says he’s the one.”

“We should have held on to one of the girls. Tommy is unreliable at best. He could direct us to his landlord or his worst enemy.” Will’s knee bounces with his nerves.

“If we stalk him, we’ll know,” Hannibal says. “Even if the person he supplies the women to calls him and tells him someone has released them, he won’t be able to stop this. Though the letters he sent were not a true picture of the reasons for his need to collect, it is a true compulsion. He likely took more women over the years, and his desire to sell them is a brag. Or do you think his collecting is purely commercial?”

Will closes his eyes. He has been hesitant to use his empathy lately. Perhaps it is because it leaves him in a vulnerable position while alone with Hannibal, or perhaps it is because he had gone so deep before he’d been framed that he was afraid of getting lost inside again. But he closes his eyes now and lets the collector’s design wash over him. He sees flashes of how long it would have taken for him to get the social skills just right to talk way into the women’s apartment. He sees flashes of beating women who he failed to convince.

He opens his eyes. “You think his first attempts were murders. Why wouldn’t the police force have noticed? Where did he put the bodies?”

“Perhaps he targeted the type of women whose absence might not be reported to the police?”

Will nods. “He practiced his skills on prostitutes and then worked his way up to Tinder. Makes sense.” He considered. “There’s usually a message board or an account on social media, or a board in a shelter somewhere that has missing persons notices or warnings about unsafe dates. We just have to figure out where that exists in Yuma.”

“I could probably find out easier than you,” Hannibal murmurs.

“How would you do that?”

“I would claim to be a reporter. Or a documentary film maker. Though you don’t look like a stereotypical police officer in some ways, the way you question people would reveal your status to those who are used to being wary of law enforcement.”

“Wait,” Will says, holding up a hand. “Is that the guy?”

They have a description from Tommy to go off of, and they watch as he walks over to the car Tommy had pointed out as his. They had looked up the license plate as they waited, but they’d only found basic information about the man the car was registered to.

Will looks at Hannibal. “So do we follow him, or go through his apartment?”

“We could split up.”

Will thinks about the killer’s design. “I don’t think he’d leave evidence around his apartment. Not this guy. We should follow him together.”

Hannibal starts up the car and eases into traffic. He follows with the proficiency of a twenty year veteran of the police force, but Will decides not to inflate his ego any more than it already is by commenting on it. Besides, it feels weird to compliment him on his stalking abilities.

They follow the man to a coffee date. They can see him meet a woman through the window.

Hannibal looks at Will. “Would you like to have coffee with me, my dear?”

Will nods, and Hannibal looks as pleased as if this was a simple coffee date. Perhaps for Hannibal a coffee date where they stalk a potential victim is actually superior to a simple coffee date. It probably is.

Hannibal doesn’t ask him what he would like, but leaves Will to choose a table as he goes and gets them each a coffee. Will sits close, but not too close, to their potential victim. He mentally reviews what he knows about the man from looking up his DMV information. Henry Dronard was a plain, but not ugly, white male, 34 years old, and lived in a declining neighborhood. They’d googled him to see if they could find out any information about what he did for a living, but hadn’t had any luck. That didn’t mean he was unemployed, but might mean he was a tradesman, laborer or other profession where he didn’t have to have a large online presence.

Will can just barely hear Henry when he strains—or rather, he can hear Henry’s date. Will cottons on to Henry’s strategy to be a good date right away. Henry listens. The young woman he is with, a pretty Asian who looks about twenty-five and seems enthusiastic about their conversation, is bubbly and happy. Will will make sure the girl didn’t lose that—not today, anyway.

Hannibal sits down and hands Will an exotic smelling drink. “Don’t complain, just try it.”

Will frowns. “You asked me to coffee, not…whatever this is,” he says, but he tries it. It’s got coffee in it, and ginger, and something else Will can’t identify. It’s delicious. Will gestures towards Hannibal’s drink. “What did you get?”

“Four shots of Espresso,” Hannibal says.

Will watches with a kind of awe as Hannibal puts several packages of sugar into his drink, and then stirs it. “Is it legal for you to drive after drinking that? Operate heavy machinery?”

“Legality has never been a primary concern of mine,” Hannibal sniffs, taking a sip and closing his eyes in appreciation. “In Yuma, we find authentic Italian Espresso. America never ceases to amaze me.” He dumps a biscotti into the Espresso and leans closer, and speaks in a quiet voice. “How is the date going?”

“He listens,” Will says.

Hannibal nods. “A perfect way to gain someone’s trust, if I do say so myself.”

Will struggles not to roll his eyes. He enjoys the spicy coffee a bit too much—did Hannibal get him a pumpkin spice latte?—but refuses to ask him what it is. The date goes on for quite some time, and then the woman follows Henry out of the coffee shop and gets into his car.

Hannibal and Will scramble to follow. As Hannibal eases into traffic, he looks at Will. “How would he take her?”

“He just needs to get into her apartment. Maybe he talks about books or movies and angles the conversation so she offers to lend him her favorite. Or maybe this is a second or third date and he’s being invited back for sex. He would get inside, and then drug her. Not in her drink. A syringe. He might work in medicine, or have some other kind of access to sedatives that can be injected. Veterinary medicine, maybe.”

They wait for the couple to go into the building, and then follow them inside. They don’t know what apartment she’s in, so Hannibal knocks on a random door. An older woman answers.

Hannibal holds out his wallet. “I’m so sorry to bother you. I was just walking down the street and I saw a pretty Asian girl drop this wallet. She walked into this building. Do you know what apartment number I should look for?”

The woman gives him the number without a qualm, despite the fact that a license would probably have an apartment number on it, and Hannibal and Will proceed there. Hannibal pulls masks and their plastic suits out of his bag, and they put them on quickly. Hannibal tries the door, and it’s unlocked. He walks in, with Will following behind.

They see the woman passed out on the floor first, and take their masks off by silent mutual consent. They can kill him, right here, right now, and so it doesn’t matter if he can identify them. They walk round a corner and see him there, his arms full of toiletries. He sees them and drops everything he’s carrying, reaching into his pockets, but it’s too late.

Will already has his hands on the man’s neck. Hannibal comes closer and bats Henry’s hands away from his pockets. He takes something out of his pockets but Will doesn’t really see what. His vision has gone red. He’s squeezing Henry’s neck—the man’s face has gone red, and he lets his legs go limp, forcing Will to let go.

Hannibal kicks Henry when he’s down, but makes no further move to attack him. With a stab of affection, Will realizes Hannibal is giving this one to him. He jumps on Henry, who makes several grabs at his own ankles.

Will looks at Hannibal, and Hannibal searches Henry’s ankles. He finds a knife in a sheath, takes it, and gives it to Will.

“What did you do with your other victims? The ones who died?” Will asks. The man struggles against his grasp and Will slaps his face. “You tell me now, and I’ll slit your throat. If you refuse to tell me, I’ll let _him_ have you.”

Henry looks up at Hannibal, and something about what he sees must terrify him, because he stills immediately and gives very specific directions to an old well on a property he owns. Will looks at Hannibal, who nods, and he slits Henry’s throat. 

Will has a weird moment where he wishes he was somewhere private so he could feel the hot blood on his skin, but it sprays on the plastic suit instead. Next time, he thinks. He catches Hannibal’s eye and realizes Hannibal knows just what he’s thinking, and doesn’t care if Will’s thoughts aren’t tasty. Hannibal smiles at him, helps him clean the blood off the suit, and then they take them off and go back to the car.

“So the girl wakes up—” Will starts.

“—she realizes there’s a dead man in her apartment. She calls the police, who investigate and find out a Good Samaritan followed her in. They realize he must have realized there was something suspicious about the man, they fought, and the kidnapper-to-be died.”

“But what if she sees the body and panics—gets covered in blood—and ends up going to jail? She seemed like a good person. She doesn’t deserve that.”

Hannibal takes out a burner phone Will wasn’t even aware he had, and calls in an anonymous report of a body in the apartment they’d just vacated. He’s surprisingly good at disguising his accent and his voice.

Will feels drained. Euphoric, but drained—like he’d run a marathon. He needs to go back to the hotel, but he knows there’s a man still alive in the trunk of their car. “What now?”

“I’m taking you back to the hotel. I think you’ve had enough excitement for one day, my dear. I will take our friend Tommy out to the property Henry described, I’ll find the well, and I’ll dispose of him there. I’m sure we can guide the investigation to Henry eventually, so the bodies will be found. You really need to find a case closer to home. It’s impossible to transport meat safely in a plane—or it wouldn’t be up to my standards of freshness, anyway. I wish I could take some meat from him. I’d like to make you a kidney pie.”

Will surprises himself by agreeing—and by not even arguing that Hannibal shouldn’t kill Tommy. “I’ll see what I can do.”

When he gets to the hotel, he showers and falls asleep before Hannibal even comes back. 


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that it's been months. Work started up and I have been busy--like really busy--with real life. Boo real life. Anyway, I hope to get more done on this story soon--I will have time during Christmas break, for sure.

Hannibal moved around the hotel room quietly, but not stealthily. Those like Will, with bad dreams, might react worse to a full sneak through the room that woke them than someone obviously clomping around.

So he was not surprised when Will flicked on the light.

His curls tumbled adorably around his face, and his cheeks were flushed. “You took care of it?” he asked, his voice rough from sleep.

Hannibal nodded. “How are you feeling after your adrenaline crash?”

Will shrugged and then his shoulders hunched. “Ashamed of myself.”

Hannibal was disappointed. He’d hoped Will was over his narrow definitions of right and wrong. Before he could frame a response, Will continued speaking, the words tumbling from him like he couldn’t stem their flow.

“I can’t believe I just left you there to deal with all that. I killed someone. And I was sloppy. We both were! And I just let you drop me off. You had to what…kill a man? And for what? He was involved in something terrible, but he wasn’t a monster. And you had to clean the car? I should have been with you. Stopped you from killing that guy. Or helped you kill him. I don’t know what you know but I can learn.”

Hannibal felt a rush of affection, then sat quickly and put his hands on either side of Will’s face. “My darling. I am here for you. I’m happy to take care of you. You did something that is difficult to overcome. If you had killed in the line of duty you would have sat wrapped in a blanket being treated for shock and then had a week off of work. I felt bad that I left you to deal with the trauma all on your own.”

Will moved out of Hannibal’s reach. “But I’m not at work. I wanted to kill him. If anything, I wished I could have had time to draw it out. To savour. What’s the point of this, all of this, if I’m too delicate to even clean up? I’m a useless partner.”

Hannibal wasn’t sure if comfort or strictness was called for here, so he gave neither. He simply said, “The first time most people kill, they are discovered. They’re too tired from the adrenaline crash, or their thinking gets muddled because of guilt. They get overwhelmed by the physicality of it—the fact that they’re left covered in blood with this sack of meat to get rid of. They allow panic to creep in, and they make mistakes. I know it won’t always just be me. But you need to grow as a hunter, my dear. You can’t be expected to do it all perfectly the first time.”

“But with Randell Tier I was in control. I can’t help but feel I’m going backward. Maybe I’m not cut out for this.”

Hannibal finally gave in to the urge to run his fingers through Will’s curls. “That was self-defense. You hunted and killed today, in cold blood.” He paused and noticed how Will leaned into his touch. “Did you eat?”

Will laughed. “Not since breakfast. Did you bring your sandwiches up from the car?”

Hannibal grimaced at the thought of eating sandwiches that had been sitting in the cooler pack all day, but it was the quickest, easiest option. He took out the sandwiches and gave one to Will.

Will tore into it, eating until it was gone. “What was that? It was delicious.”

“Cheese and avocado.”

Will nodded. He laughed wryly. “I can’t believe you let me eat a sandwich in bed. Does this mean you’re not going to sleep in here with me?”

“We have two beds, my dear. When we go to sleep, you can join me in the other one.”

Will leaned closer to Hannibal and rested his forehead on Hannibal’s shoulder. “You’re going to get sick of looking after me one of these days.”

Hannibal shook his head. “After what I saw today? I find it very unlikely I will get sick of anything to do with you. One of the basic human needs that is often neglected is understanding. You understand me. Even other killers don’t understand me. I’m not a traditional psychopath, and I don’t conform to any recorded pathology. You know this. That fact that you could give me that understanding made you appeal to me initially. It might have even been enough on its own. But then you changed. You became such a dangerous, beautiful creature; one whose value to me is incalculable and sacrosanct. I could never tire of you.”

“Getting sick of looking after me is not the same as getting sick of me.” Will’s enunciation was getting exaggerated; a sure sign he was agitated.

Hannibal frowned. “What has you so upset?”

“That woman who told us the girl’s apartment number. She could identify us. What the hell did we do, Hannibal? Was that me being sloppy? Was it the two of us being overconfident—thinking that since we’re finally together as we always should have been we can’t get caught? Was it our mutual hubris, or did you do that because you want suspicion to be thrown on us? You want us to have to run, don’t you?”

Hannibal frowned. “I confess, I don’t much care if suspicion falls on me. If it does, I’ll simply move on to another country. I’ve done it before. I’m not a cautious man. I fed human organs to the head of the Behavioral Science Unit, repeatedly, and made puns about it, knowing he was studying those murder scenes and knew the victim was missing the exact organ I fed him. I court getting caught, and I always have. I would be happy to take away you with me if we get cast into suspicion, but it was never my intention to trap you into running with this arrangement. I like this arrangement quite a lot. I have no wish to destroy it.”

“But what will the woman say when the police ask if she saw anyone suspicious?”

“I don’t know, Will. I could go back and kill her, if it would make you feel better,” Hannibal murmured.

“She was a nice old lady! You wouldn’t kill a nice old lady, would you? It’s not your MO.”

“Not normally. But there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, if you ask me to.”

Will huffed. “Your sudden devotion to me isn’t all that convincing. And no, my doubt isn’t the same thing as agreement that you should go kill the nice old lady.”

“The kidnapper is dead. The women have been returned to their lives, and the bodies of the remaining victims will be found when they look in the kidnapper’s apartment and realize he held the deed to another property. The police could waste time trying to find the man who killed the kidnapper, or they could let it go. They probably all suspect each other, anyway. Vigilantes are often police officers or former police officers, after all.”

Will glared. “They’re not, actually.”

“No, they’re not. But police always think they are.”

Will rolled his eyes and tried to pull away.

Hannibal pulled him closer instead, and to his surprise, Will let himself be pulled. Hannibal remembered how Will had liked to be held, and he held him now. Will seemed to lose all his prickly edges and sunk into the embrace. Hannibal rubbed Will’s back, and then pulled him out of the bed.

“Oh my god you were serious about making me sleep in the other bed? But this one is warmed up,” Will complained. He got out of the bed and moved to the other one easily enough, though, and Hannibal began to undress and don his pajamas. Will propped his head on his hands and watched him put his clothes away.

Hannibal slipped under the covers and then pulled Will into his embrace. Will snuggled closer and Hannibal petted his head.

“Do you really think we’ll get away with doing what we did without suspicion falling on us? What if we have to go to the crime scene and the old lady sees us?”

“Your cold should perhaps progress to full-blown flu, and I can stay to minister to you, like the considerate doctor that I am. They will investigate the killing, and eventually realize that he’s the kidnapper and killer they are seeking.”

“What if there’s nothing tying him to the murders, even in his apartment? We know where he left the bodies, but what if the investigators don’t make the connection?”

Hannibal ran a reassuring hand down Will’s back. “I left something I took from one of the kidnapping victims in his apartment tonight. I’m sure they’ll investigate his holdings. I also looked through his filing cabinet and found the deed to the property I left Tommy’s body on. I put it on the fridge. A trifle obvious, I know, but time was short.”

Will hummed. “I guess the victims would have identified him. They dated him. Even if he used a false name, Yuma police would figure it out, right?”

“I think so. And if I am forced to take you on the run, where we will have to live a life of romantic adventure and isolation from society while I show you the world and its most beautiful works of art, well, that’s a sacrifice I’m prepared to make.”

Will’s body shook with laughter, but then he stilled. “What happens when we get back to Baltimore?”

Hannibal wasn’t sure what Will was referring to at first, but then he understood. “If you want to pretend to go back to a time before we were open about our feelings for each other—before I knew the pleasure of kissing you, my love, I’ll do my best to comply.”

Will’s huff of breath moved Hannibal’s pajama shirt. “You couldn’t even finish that sentence without calling me ‘my love.’ I seriously doubt you would be able to pretend indifference.”

Hannibal pulled Will tighter. “No, I could never pretend indifference. Not with you. But I could live on the memories of the freedom to touch you, and care for you, and kiss you I’ve had during this trip for quite some time. I adore you, Will, and whatever happens between us from today forward is for you to decide.”

Will didn’t reply, and Hannibal was disconcerted to realize a moment later that he was asleep. He was turning into a good sleeper, which was something Hannibal could never have foreseen. He couldn’t begrudge Will a rest after all the sleepless nights he’d caused Will—but he wondered if Will would want to continue the romantic and intimate aspect of their relationship when they got back to Baltimore well into the night.

The next morning they worked from the hotel room and helpfully volunteered to examine the MRA message boards while Will tried to overcome his ‘flu’. Will’s strange vulnerability of the previous night seemed to vanish with the morning sun, and they worked to analyse the printouts of the message boards Jimmy had provided them with. They helpfully highlighted all the parts that spoke about female impurity and added questions about whether the group would have been interested in using the brothel or if the entire idea would have offended their sensibilities. Perhaps the Yuma police would draw the conclusion from their analysis that the MRA group was likely to have killed their kidnapper, and perhaps not. But they had peppered the forest trail with breadcrumbs that could lead them in that direction.

Eventually Jack came to their room and told them they’d cut it a bit close, and should get on the next plane back to Baltimore before anyone realized they were the men who had spoken to the old woman in the apartment building where their kidnapper had been murdered. He did not yell, but Hannibal was certain he would have if he’d been guaranteed that no one would overhear him.

They packed their bags, and Hannibal felt a deep reluctance to go so early, although he knew it was the wise thing to do. He thought he would have one more night of holding Will in his arms, but now the previous night might have been the last, and he hadn’t even known enough to savour it.

Hannibal felt despondent as he packed, but tried to convince himself not to do anything dramatic. Will hadn’t said for sure he would go back to being cold with Hannibal. He shouldn’t let his hurt make him do anything…operatic, though his nature demanded he express himself somehow.

Hannibal looked over at Will. Perhaps he would prepare a feast for the two of them to enjoy, though the question of worthy meat remained something he would have to think on further. 


End file.
